Treatment of axial data in three-dimensional PET

Improved axial spatial resolution in positron emission tomography (PET) scanners will lead to reduced sensitivity unless the axial acceptance angle for the coincidences is kept constant. A large acceptance angle, however, violates assumptions made in most reconstruction algorithms, which reconstruct parallel independent slices, rather than a three-dimensional volume. Two methods of treating the axial information from a volume PET scanner are presented. Qualitative and quantitative errors introduced by the approximations are examined for simulated objects with sharp boundaries and for a more anatomically realistic distribution with smooth activity gradients.