Analysis of Respiratory Motion Artifacts in PET Imaging Using Respiratory Gated PET Combined with 4D-CT

Cho, Byung Chul; Park, Sung Ho; Park, Hee Chul; Bae, Hoonsik; Hwang, Hee Sung; Shin, Hee Soon

Abstract

PURPOSE
Reduction of respiratory motion artifacts in PET images was studied using respiratory-gated PET (RGPET) with moving phantom. Especially a method of generating simulated helical CT images from 4D-CT datasets was developed and applied to a respiratory specific RGPET images for more accurate attenuation correction. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Using a motion phantom with periodicity of 6 seconds and linear motion amplitude of 26 mm, PET/CT (Discovery ST; GEMS) scans with and without respiratory gating were obtained for one syringe and two vials with each volume of 3, 10, and 30 ml respectively. RPM (Real-Time Position Management, Varian) was used for tracking motion during PET/CT scanning. Ten datasets of RGPET and 4D-CT corresponding to every 10% phase intervals were acquired. From the positions, sizes, and uptake values of each subject on the resultant phase specific PET and CT datasets, the correlations between motion artifacts in PET and CT images and the size of motion relative to the size of subject were analyzed. RESULTS: The center positions of three vials in RGPET and 4D-CT agree well with the actual position within the estimated error. However, volumes of subjects in non-gated PET images increase proportional to relative motion size and were overestimated as much as 250% when the motion amplitude was increased two times larger than the size of the subject. On the contrary, the corresponding maximal uptake value was reduced to about 50%. CONCLUSION: RGPET is demonstrated to remove respiratory motion artifacts in PET imaging, and moreover, more precise image fusion and more accurate attenuation correction is possible by combining with 4D-CT.