A comparison of transform and iterative reconstruction techniques for a volume-imaging PET scanner with a large axial acceptance angle

The authors present the results of comparing 3-D transform and iterative reconstruction methods with measured PET data from the HEAD PENN-PET scanner, which has a very large axial acceptance angle of 27/spl deg/. The algorithms compared are the 3-D-reprojection (3DRP) method, the iterative algebraic reconstruction technique (ART), and the maximum likelihood (ML-EM) algorithm. For the iterative methods, alternatives to the cubic voxel basis functions are also implemented. The comparisons are based on a series of figures of merit, including the point-spread function, the contrast recovery coefficient, and signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). The results show that the ART method implemented with the new basis functions requires only one cycle through the data to produce images with measured SNR values comparable to or better than the 3DRP method. The ML-EM method was run for 10 iterations and produced images with lower SNR values for the test phantom used. With the exception of the ML-EM results, these are in agreement with the authors' previous simulation studies.