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SPECT Bruyant PDF
SPECT Bruyant PDF
Nuclear Spectroscopy and Image Processing Research Group, Biophysics Laboratory, Claude Bernard University, Lyon, France
be proportional to the tracer concentration we are interested in. scintillation site is unfortunately unknown. As a consequence,
The function g is the projection of f onto the crystal as allowed the amount of information brought by only 1 projection is
by the collimator. This means that g(s, ") is the sum of the insufficient to obtain an image of the tracer distribution in the
radioactive counts recorded in any time interval at point s when organ of interest, because a large number of radioactive distri-
the detector is at angle ". The collimator defines the kind of butions can generate the same pattern in a single projection.
projection (e.g., an orthogonal projection for parallel collima- Fortunately, the number of possible solutions can be reduced in
tors) and determines the direction of the incident photon for acquiring projections for many distinct angular positions of the
any scintillation in the crystal. The difficulty is that photons detector. Moreover, as the number of projections increases, the
emitted at different depths, but along the same direction, can possible solutions are increasingly alike.
potentially produce scintillations at the same location in the At the end of the acquisition process, each point of the
crystal; thus, the distance between the emission site and the detector, for each angular position, contains the number of
scintillations, or counts. A common representation for the Because an integral is basically a sum of values, the value
projection data g corresponding to a slice is the sinogram g(s, ") is the sum of the values f (x, y) along D$. For this
(Fig. 2). A sinogram is a 2D image, in which the horizontal reason, g(s, ") is called a ray-sum. The variable u defines the
axis represents the count location on the detector, and the location of the points to be summed (the points along D$).
vertical axis corresponds to the angular position of the Because computers can only deal with a finite number of
detector. The corresponding number of counts is assigned to elements in the detector and in the field of view, g(s, ") and
each point of the sinogram. The problem is: Given a sino- f (x, y) are in practice functions of discrete variablesthat
gram g, what is the distribution of radioactivity f in the slice is, the variables s, ", x, and y have a finite number of
of interest? We shall first describe the projection process possible values. In this presentation, the elements of the
when a parallel collimator is used and then see how an slice are the pixels, and each point of measurement on the
estimate of the activity distribution in the slice can be found detector, for each projection angle, is called a bin. So the
using the FBP, CG, MLEM, and MAPEM algorithms.
number of bins equals the number of points of measurement
multiplied by the number of angles. Figure 3 presents an
PROJECTION OPERATOR
example of a discrete projection for a 3 # 3 image at 2
Geometric Considerations angles. The result is a sinogram with 2 rows (corresponding
The collimator allows only photons whose direction is par- to 2 projection angles) and 3 columns (corresponding to 3
allel to the axis of its holes to be potentially detected. For each points of measurements on the detector), so there are 6 bins.
detector angle ", and for each location s on the detector, this From a mathematic point of view, the sets of values in the
direction is defined by a line D$ whose equation is (Appendix 1): sinogram and the reconstructed slice can be considered as
s ! x cos " " y sin ". Eq. 1 matrices or vectors. A matrix is a set of values organized in
rows and columns; a vector is a set of values in 1 column.
Let us first consider the projection operation, giving the Readers unfamiliar with matrices should pay special atten-
number of counts detected in any point of the detector line tion to the easy concept of matrix product defined in Ap-
g(s, ") as a function of the number of counts f (x, y) emitted pendix 2, because it is a fundamental tool to understand
in any point of the field of view (here, we consider the ideal
image reconstruction. In Table 1 is listed the notation we
case, without noise, attenuation, scattering, numerical ap-
will use throughout this presentation.
proximations, and so forth).
In the following, we will consider the sinogram and the
Radon Transform slice as 2 vectors; the vectors are formed by stacking the
Mathematically, the projection operator can be defined by rows of the matrices. In these vectors, the location of a bin
the Radon transform (13,14). The Radon transform g(s, ") is known by its index i and the location of a pixel by its
of a function f (x, y) is the line integral of the values of index j. It can be shown that the vector g is the matrix
f (x, y) along the line inclined at an angle " from the x-axis product of matrix A and vector f (Appendix 3). The value gi
at a distance s from the origin: of any bin is a weighted sum of the m pixel values in the
g%s, "& ! image:
! '(
)(
f %s cos " # u sin ", s sin " " u cos "&du. Eq. 2 g i ! ai1 f1 " ai2 f2 " . . . " aim fm ! "a f.
m
j*1
ij j Eq. 3
!
i, or as the probability that a photon emitted from pixel j is +
detected in bin i. The use of zeros or ones in the matrix A b%x, y& ! g%s, "&d". Eq. 4
can be interpreted as the binary choice a given pixel 0
contributes or does not contribute to the number of counts
detected in any bin. However, to get a more realistic Backprojection represents the accumulation of the ray-sums
model, we want to be able to modulate this contribution. To of all the rays that pass through any point M(x, y). Remem-
do so, the aijs may not be necessarily equal to 0 or 1 but can ber that for a given point M and for a given projection angle
be any real values between 0 and 1. As we shall see below, ", s is given by Equation 1. Applying backprojection to
the correct determination of the aijs is important because the projection data is called the summation algorithm. In ideal
iterative algorithms use the projection operation. The values conditions (in particular, without attenuation), the projec-
are carefully chosen to take into account the geometry of tions acquired at angles between + radians (180) and 2+
acquisition and, more precisely, the fact that a variable radians (360) do not provide new information, because
they are only the symmetric of the projections acquired at yield the same projection(s), but only for a limited set of
angles between 0 and +. This is why the orbit can be here angles; if 2 images are distinct, then one can find 1 or more
limited to + radians. This redundancy of information is angles at which their projections are different (Fig. 5). An
illustrated in Figure 2, where the lower half of the sinogram infinite number of projections is theoretically required to
is identical to the upper half after symmetry along the perfectly reconstruct an object. When the number of pro-
vertical axis (inverting the left and the right). jections is small relative to the matrix size, a particular
Replacing the integral in Equation 4 by a sum, the im- artifact may be visible: the star (or streak) artifact. An
plementation for a discrete backprojection is given by: illustration of this artifact is presented Figure 6. It can be
reduced by increasing the number of acquired projections,
" g%s , " &,",
p
Finally, this matrix is added to the matrix of the image under struction. The frequencies of an image are similar to the
reconstruction (17). frequencies of a sound. A high frequency in a sound is heard
The main point of this part is that the backprojection when its amplitude varies quickly over a given period. A
operation is not the inverse of the projection operation. This high frequency in an image is seen when its amplitude in
means that applying backprojection to the ray-sums g(s, ") any direction varies quickly over a given distance (and that
does not yield f (x, y) but a blurred f (x, y) (Figs. 8 and 9). is why the frequencies in an image are called spatial fre-
This problem is due to the fact that during the backprojec- quencies). A checkerboard with 4 large squares or with 64
tion process, each bin value is attributed to all pixels that small squares is an example of an image with low or high
project onto that bin and not only to the pixel(s) the activity spatial frequencies, respectively. Any image will usually
is coming from (because the source location is unknown). In include several frequencies, when there are large and small
the following, we shall see how to reduce this blur. objects in it. Using a mathematic tool called the Fourier
Backprojection Filtering and FBP transform, an image can be split up in several components,
It is important to understand the concept of spatial fre- each corresponding to a given frequency. For sake of sim-
quency to apprehend the role of filtering in image recon- plicity, we shall consider here only 2 components, the low-
f%x, y& ! !0
+
g%s, "&d", Eq. 6
unfortunately much of the image noise is present at these there are trade-offs involved; the reduction in noise comes
frequencies. This problem can be partially solved by replac- at the cost of a loss of spatial resolution. More details on
ing the ramp filter with a filter that also reduces the weight image filtering in nuclear medicine can be found elsewhere
of the highest-frequency components (Fig. 12). As always, (18 20).
FIGURE 13. How ART algorithm works. (A) Problem is to find values of 4 pixels given values in 6 bins. (B) ART algorithm:
Difference between estimated and measured projections is computed and divided by number of pixels in given direction. Result
is added to current estimate. (C) First step: Project initial estimate (zeros) in vertical direction, apply ART algorithm, and update pixel
values. Repeat this process for oblique (D) and horizontal (E) rays. (F) Solution is obtained after 1 full iteration. However, with larger
images, more iterations are typically required.
"
!f %k&
j
n
gi reconstruction.
!f %k)1& ! aij. Eq. 9
j
Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) Algorithms
"a "
n m
i*1
ij aij$!f j$%k& Actually, the reconstructed images obtained using the
i*1 j$*1 MLEM algorithm tend to become noisy as the number of
iterations increases, because noisy reconstructed images
The first image !f (0) can be a uniform disk enclosed in the may yield projections that are very close to the measured
field of view (30) or an image obtained by FBP (in this case noisy projections. Thus, the criterion estimated projections
the negative values, if any, must be set to zero or some small have to be as close as possible to measured projections is
positive value). Notice that because the first image is posi- not the best criterion to obtain subjectively high-quality
tive (negative values do not make sense) and because each images. A better criterion may be (a) estimated projections
new value is found by multiplying the current value by a have to be as close as possible to measured projections
positive factor, any !f (k) cannot have negative values and that AND (b) the reconstructed images have to be not too noisy.
any values set initially to zero will remain zero. The introduction of a prior knowledge as a constraint that
The EM algorithm can be seen as a set of successive may favor convergence of the EM process is called regu-
projections/backprojections (31): The factor gi /(j$*1 aij$!f j$(k))
m
larization. The prior, based on an assumption of what the
is the ratio of the measured number of counts to the current true image is, is usually chosen to penalize the noisy im-
n m
estimate of the mean number of counts in bin i. i*1 (gi /j$*1 ages. The goal is now to find !f so that the requirements (a)
aij$!f j$ )aij is the backprojection of this ratio for pixel j. Equation
(k)
and (b) above are simultaneously maximized (Appendix 5).
9, which is to be applied pixel by pixel, can be extended to the The maximization leads to an iterative scheme called the
whole image and interpreted as: one-step-late (OSL) algorithm, described by Green (31):
Image%k)1& ! Image%k& $ Normalized Backprojection of !f %k&
"
n
gi
# $
j
!f %k)1& ! aij, Eq. 11
Measured projections j
" "
n m
. Eq. 10 / i*1
Projections of image%k& aij " . U% !f %k&
j & aij$ !f j$%k&
i*1
/f j
j$*1
In other words, at each iteration k, a current estimate of the
image is available. Using a system model (which may include where (///fj)U( !f (k)
j ) (the prior term) is the derivative of a
attenuation and blur), it is possible to simulate what projections function U, called an energy function, and chosen to enforce
of this current estimate should look like. The measured pro- smoothing and . is a value chosen to modulate the impor-
jections are then compared with simulated projections of the tance of the prior. This modified EM algorithm is called the
current estimate, and the ratio between these simulated and MAPEM algorithm using the OSL approach.
measured projections is used to modify the current estimate to To understand how the MAPEM algorithm favors smooth
produce an updated (and hopefully more accurate) estimate, images, we shall use as an example the quadratic prior (33).
which becomes iteration k ) 1. This process is then repeated The energy function U in this case is defined as:
many times. The MLEM algorithm converges slowly and may
require 50200 iterations.
/
!
/f %k&
j
U% !f %k&
j &! " wjb% !f %k& ! %k&
j # f b &, Eq. 12
The ordered-subsets expectation maximization (OSEM) b!N j
has been proposed by Hudson and Larkin (32) to accelerate where Nj is a set of pixels in the neighborhood of pixel j.
% xy !! ss cos
within scintigraphic and MRI or CT images may be differ-
ent, more sophisticated approaches have been described " # u sin "
sin " " u cos " Eq. A1.3
(40 42).
or equivalently
CONCLUSION
Three algorithms are presented here: the FBP, CG, and
MLEM algorithms. The first applications of FBP (43,44) and
% su !! x'xcossin" "" "y siny cos" ". Eq. A1.4
iterative algorithms (45) were both described in the 1960s, but The line D$ defined by the equation s * x cos " ) y sin "
for a long time, and despite the advantages of iterative algo- perpendicularly projects on D at P. Thus, this line D$ is the
rithms, the FBP algorithm was preferred because it was com- set of points M(x, y) in the field of view whose photons can
putationally faster (46). However, in clinical practice, the FBP be detected at a distance s from the middle of the detector
algorithm has several flaws: A smoothing filter is usually when the detector is at an angle ".
APPENDIX 2 APPENDIX 3
Let us consider 2 matrices B(n, m) (i.e., with n rows and In the example presented in Figure 3, we have the fol-
m columns) and C(m, l). The matrix product of B and C is lowing relationships between values in the slice and in the
the matrix D such that the value of any element dij (at the sinogram:
intersection of the ith row and jth column) of D is dij *
(
m
& '
bi1c1j ) bi2c2j ) . . . ) bimcmj * k*1 bikckj. g1 ! f3 " f6 " f9
& '
1 2 g2 ! f2 " f5 " f8
7 8
Example: if B * 3 4 and C * 9 10 , then g3 ! f1 " f4 " f7
5 6 g4 ! f1 " f2 " f3
& '
%1 $ 7& " %2 $ 9& %1 $ 8& " %2 $ 10& g5 ! f4 " f5 " f6
D * BC * %3 $ 7& " %4 $ 9& %3 $ 8& " %4 $ 10& g6 ! f7 " f8 " f9.
%5 $ 7& " %6 $ 9& %5 $ 8& " %6 $ 10& Eq. A3.1
* & 25 28
57 64 .
89 100
' This set of equations can be equivalently expressed as a
matrix product:
, P%g &
g5 000111000 n
f7
g6 000000111 !
f8 i
i*1
f9
, e g !g! .
n 'g! i gi
i
! Eq. A4.3
i
g A f i*1
The number of rows and columns of A equals the number The highest value for the likelihood L( !f ) is found by
of pixels and bins, respectively. The values in matrix A computing its derivative. To maximize the expectation, one
are appropriately chosen so that, using the definition of usually considers l( f ) * ln (L( f )), where ln denotes the
matrix product (Appendix 2), it can be verified that the natural logarithm. Remembering that for any non-null, pos-
product of A by f yields g1, g2 . . . g6 as presented in itive real values x1, x2 . . . xn we have:
Equation A3.1.
(1) ln (x1x2 . . . xn) * ln (x1) ) ln (x2) ) . . . ) ln (xn),
APPENDIX 4 (2) ln (ex1) * x1,
(3) ln (1/x1) * 'ln (x1),
The following is a simplified description of the MLEM
algorithm as presented by Shepp and Vardi (23) and by Equation A4.3 becomes:
Lange and Carson (24). In these works, the numbers of both
maximal probability is reached when the number of counts One can also write:
is equal to the mean number P(gi * g! i); here P(3) *
/l% !f &
" "
n n
(e'333)/3! 1 0.224. gi
!f j ! 'f!j aij " !fj aij ! 0, Eq. A4.7
/f!j
" a !f
The i Poisson variables are independent, and the con- i*1 i*1
m
" a " a !f
n
i*1
m Michael A. King and Stephen J. Glick for their assistance in
ij ij$ j$ improving this manuscript.
i*1 j$*1
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