A Statistical Reconstruction Algorithm for Positronium Lifetime Imaging Using Time-of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography

Positron emission tomography (PET) is an important modality for diagnosing diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, capable of revealing the uptake of radiolabeled molecules that target specific pathological markers of the diseases. Recently, positronium lifetime imaging (PLI) that adds to traditional PET the ability to explore properties of the tissue microenvironment beyond tracer uptake has been demonstrated with time-of-flight (TOF) PET and the use of nonpure positron emitters. However, achieving accurate reconstruction of lifetime images from data acquired by systems having a finite TOF resolution still presents a challenge. This article focuses on the 2-D PLI, introducing a maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) method that employs an exponentially modified Gaussian (EMG) probability distribution that describes the positronium lifetime data produced by TOF PET. We evaluate the performance of our EMG-based MLE method against approaches using exponential likelihood functions and penalized surrogate methods. Results from computer-simulated data reveal that the proposed EMG-MLE method can yield quantitatively accurate lifetime images. We also demonstrate that the proposed MLE formulation can be extended to handle PLI data containing multiple positron populations.