Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 7, 2026
High-Resolution Cardiac Positron Emission Tomography/Computed Tomography for Small Animals
Published on: December 16, 2022
Analysis of partial volume correction on quantification and regional heterogeneity in cardiac PET
A Turco1, J Nuyts2, J Duchenne3
1Department of Imaging and Pathology, Nuclear Medicine and Molecular imaging, Medical Imaging Research Center (MIRC), KU Leuven - University of Leuven, B-3000, Leuven, Belgium. anna.turco@med.kuleuven.be.
Background:
The partial volume correction (PVC) of cardiac PET datasets using anatomical side information during reconstruction is appealing but not straightforward. Other techniques, which do not make use of additional anatomical information, could be equally effective in improving the reconstructed myocardial activity.
Methods:
Resolution modeling in combination with different noise suppressing priors was evaluated as a means to perform PVC. Anatomical priors based on a high-resolution CT are compared to non-anatomical, edge-preserving priors (relative difference and total variation prior). The study is conducted on ex vivo datasets from ovine hearts. A simulation study additionally clarifies the relationship between prior effectiveness and myocardial wall thickness.
Results:
Simple resolution modeling during data reconstruction resulted in over- and underestimation of activity, which hampers the absolute left ventricular quantification when compared to the ground truth. Both the edge-preserving and the anatomy-based PVC techniques improve the absolute quantification, with comparable results (Student t-test, P = .17). The relative tracer distribution was preserved with any reconstruction technique (repeated ANOVA, P = .98).
Conclusions:
The use of edge-preserving priors emerged as optimal choice for quantification of tracer uptake in the left ventricular wall of the available datasets. Anatomical priors visually outperformed edge-preserving priors when the thinnest structures were of interest.
