Patient motion during medical imaging using techniques such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), or single emission computed tomography (SPECT) is well known to degrade images, leading to blurring effects or severe artifacts. Motion correction methods try to overcome these degrading effects. However, they need to be validated under realistic conditions. In this work, a sophisticated anthropomorphic thorax phantom is presented that combines several aspects of a simulator for cardio-respiratory motion. The phantom allows us to simulate various types of cardio-respiratory motions inside a human-like thorax, including features such as inflatable lungs, beating left ventricular myocardium, respiration-induced motion of the left ventricle, moving lung lesions, and moving coronary artery plaques. The phantom is constructed to be MR-compatible. This means that we can not only perform studies in PET, SPECT and CT, but also inside an MRI system. The technical features of the anthropomorphic thorax phantom Wilhelm are presented with regard to simulating motion effects in hybrid emission tomography and radiotherapy. This is supplemented by a study on the detectability of small coronary plaque lesions in PET/CT under the influence of cardio-respiratory motion, and a study on the accuracy of left ventricular blood volumes.
Small animal PET plays a major role in studying molecular processes in vivo. However, the spatial resolution of small animal PET is limited by physical effects like positron range, photon non-collinearity, and object scattering. The aim of this project was to minimize the influence of the non-collinearity effect by reducing the distance between the coincidence detectors leading to an improved spatial resolution. A multi-wire proportional chamber-based high-resolution PET scanner (quadHIDAC) was used, offering a spatial resolution of nearly 1 mm FWHM. By removing two opposite detector banks of the 4-detector-setup, the inner distance between the two remaining detector plates could be reduced from 180 mm to 40 mm. List mode acquisitions of a small point source (22Na) experiment were performed, images were reconstructed (0.25 mm voxel size) using a one-pass list-mode EM algorithm and the FWHM in the radial, tangential, and axial directions was calculated. In addition, a Jaszczak phantom (hole sizes of 0.7 up to 1.2 mm) was acquired with both scanners. The prototype high-resolution PET scanner showed improved spatial resolution in radial (0.9 mm FWHM), tangential (0.9 mm FWHM), and axial (0.8 mm FWHM) direction compared to the quadHIDAC scanner (1.x mm, 1.x mm, 1.x mm), respectively offering clear sub-millimeter imaging. Blurring effects due to photon non-collinearity could be reduced by minimizing the detector distance.
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