Search results

(1 - 1 of 1)

Title

IMPROVED SPATIAL-TEMPORAL RECONSTRUCTION FOR CARDIAC AND RESPIRATORY GATED SPECT

Creator

Qi, Wenyuan

Date

2014, 2014-12

Description

Myocardial perfusion single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is an important imaging technique for evaluating coronary artery...
Show moreMyocardial perfusion single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is an important imaging technique for evaluating coronary artery disease. It can provide information of both myocardial perfusion and ventricular function. However, SPECT images su er from both cardiac and respiratory motion blur. In order to reduce the motion degrading, cardiac and respiratory gated SPECT imaging is used. In gated SPECT imaging, due to the lowered counts, the gated images will be more noisy than the ungated ones. Spatiotemporal (4D) processing is often used to reduce the noise level in gated images. In this thesis, we aim to investigate spatial and temporal processing techniques for improving the quality in cardiac and respiratory gated SPECT imaging. First, we will investigate a piecewise spatial smoothing prior based on totalvariation (TV) in 4D cardiac SPECT image reconstruction. In previous studies, it was found that spatial smoothing could adversely a ect the accuracy of 4D reconstruction in cardiac gated SPECT when temporal smoothing was applied, even though it could suppress the noise level. Our goal is to explore whether a piecewise spatial smoothing prior will improve the image accuracy while reducing the noise. Toward this goal, we will compare TV based piecewise spatial smoothing with quadratic spatial smoothing with simulated imaging, in which we will evaluate the lesion detectability. Clinical data will also be used to compare the results as a preliminary test. Motion-compensated temporal smoothing is known to play a key role in 4D cardiac gated SPECT reconstruction. Next, we will investigate whether better motion estimation could further improve the accuracy of reconstructed images. We will consider two di erent motion estimation models and the known motion in simulated experiments. The motion estimation methods are the classic optical ow estimation (OFE) and a periodic motion estimation method. We will evaluate the reconstruction from di erent motion models using several numerical quanti cation metrics. Furthermore, we will demonstrate reconstruction with the two motion estimation models using clinical acquisitions. Respiratory motion is known to cause motion blur in SPECT image reconstruction, and respiratory gated SPECT imaging can be e ective to combat its e ect. We will develop reconstruction techniques in respiratory gated SPECT. We will consider two reconstruction schemes for respiratory gated SPECT. The rst scheme is a post motion compensated reconstruction, in which images at di erent respiratory phases are reconstructed seperately, and afterwards are averaged over all the respiratory gates by motion compensation. The second scheme is a model based motion compensated reconstruction approach, in which one reference gate is used to describe the acquisition data of all the respiratory gates. Due to irregular respiratory motion, the data acquisition in each respiratory gate is not uniformly distributed among the acquisition angles, which would lead to limited-angle artifacts. To correct such artifacts, we propose an angle compensation method in the reconstruction. In order to deal with both cardiac and respiratory motion, we will investigate a 4D reconstruction approach for dual cardiac-respiratory gated SPECT reconstruction. This approach can accommodate the acquired data simultaneously from di erent cardiac and respiratory gates. It can exploit the correlation in the signal component among both the cardiac and respiratory phases. Both simulated experiments and clinical reconstruction will be used for evaluating this reconstruction approach. Due to the radiation risk of myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) scans, there is an urgent need to lower the radiation dose used in SPECT. However, lower radiation dose will lead to more noisy reconstruction, which is even more serious in gated SPECT. We would explore the potential of using 4D reconstruction for lowering the dose in dual cardiac-respiratory gated SPECT.
Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, December 2014
Show less