• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.655-661
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• 2021

Positron emission tomography (PET) images is affected by acquisition time, short acquisition times results in low gamma counts leading to degradation of image quality by statistical noise. Noise2Void(N2V) is self supervised denoising model that is convolutional neural network (CNN) based deep learning. The purpose of this study is to evaluate denoising performance of N2V for PET image with a short acquisition time. The phantom was scanned as a list mode for 10 min using Biograph mCT40 of PET/CT (Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany). We compared PET images using NEMA image-quality phantom for standard acquisition time (10 min), short acquisition time (2min) and simulated PET image (S2 min). To evaluate performance of N2V, the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), normalized root mean square error (NRMSE), structural similarity index (SSIM) and radio-activity recovery coefficient (RC) were used. The PSNR, NRMSE and SSIM for 2 min and S2 min PET images compared to 10min PET image were 30.983, 33.936, 9.954, 7.609 and 0.916, 0.934 respectively. The RC for spheres with S2 min PET image also met European Association of Nuclear Medicine Research Ltd. (EARL) FDG PET accreditation program. We confirmed generated S2 min PET image from N2V deep learning showed improvement results compared to 2 min PET image and The PET images on visual analysis were also comparable between 10 min and S2 min PET images. In conclusion, noisy PET image by means of short acquisition time using N2V denoising network model can be improved image quality without underestimation of radioactivity.

• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.20-23
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• 2016

Purpose Because of heart movement, PET image of heart is very blur. So, PET scan gated with ECG is necessary to improve a spatial resolution of heart PET image. In this study, we will evaluate a image quality of both gated $^{13}N-ammonia$ PET scan and non-gated one. Materials and Methods Before start a heart PET, we attached a ECG electrode on patients (n = 5, $aged=54{\pm}17$). And we started a list mode PET scan that used by a mCT40 PET/CT (siemens, germany) during 10 minute, injected $^{13}N-ammonia$ ($378{\pm}50MBq$) to a patients at same time. By using this list mode data, we reconstructed both gated PET image and non-gated PET image. Then we analysed a profiles of those images, performed a blind test, and subtracted a gated image on non-gated image. Results FWHM of a gated image is improved about 23% and there is a differency count distribution at a subtracted image from non-gated image to a gated image. But in case of blind test, everybody select the gated image as a better quality among each images. Conclusion As a result, we can find that image quality will improve by using gated PET scan. In additional, we can calculate a EF valve, apply QGS, QPS of PET. Therefore, the gated PET scan help improving an accuracy, applying a more information for a diagnosis.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.1610-1615
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• 2019

Positron emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance (MR) scanning has the advantage of less additional exposure to radiation than does PET/computed tomography (CT). In particular, MR based attenuation correction (MR AC) can greatly affect the image quality of PET and is frequently obtained using various MR sequences. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to quantitatively compare the image quality between MR non-AC (MR NAC) and MR AC in PET images with three MR sequences. Percent image uniformity (PIU), percent contrast recovery (PCR), and percent background variability (PBV) were estimated to evaluate the quality of PET images with MR AC. Based on the results of PIU, 15.2% increase in the average quality was observed for PET images with MR AC than for PET images with MR NAC. In addition, 28.6% and 71.1% improvement in the average results of PCR and PBV respectively, was observed for PET images with MR AC compared with that with MR NAC. Moreover, no significant difference was observed among the average values using three MR sequences. In conclusion, the current study demonstrated that PET with MR AC improved the image quality and can be help diagnosis in all MR sequence cases.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.103-113
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• 2022

In this paper, a combined ¹⁸F-FDG(fluorodeoxyglucose) and MNP(magnetic nanoparticles) contrast agent was synthesized using N-(p-maleimidophenyl) isocyanate as the crosslinker for use in simultaneous PET-MRI scans. PET-MRI images were acquired and evaluated before and after injection of the combined contrast imaging agent (¹⁸F-FDG labeled MNP) from a glioma stem cell mouse model. After setting the region of interest (ROI) on each acquired image, the area of the lesion was calculated by segmentation. As a result, the PET image was larger than the MRI. In particular, the simultaneous PET-MRI images showed accurate lesions along with the surrounding soft tissue. The mean and standard deviation values were higher in the MRI images alone than in the PET images or the simultaneous PET-MRI images, regardless of whether the contrast agent was injected. In addition, the simultaneous PET-MRI image values were higher than for the PET images. For PSNR experiments, the original image was PET Image using 18F-FDG, MRI using MNPs, and MRI without contrast medium, and the target image was simultaneous PET-MRI image using 18F-FDG labeled MNPs contrast medium. As a result, all of them appeared significantly, suggesting that the 18F-FDG labeled MNPs contrast medium is useful. Future research is needed to develop an agent that can simultaneously diagnose and treat through SPECT-MRI imaging research that can use various nuclides.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.321-327
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to compare PET imaging performance with Fluorine-18 ($^{18}F$) and Gallium-68 ($^{68}Ga$) for influence of physical properties of PET tracer. Measurement were performed on a Siemens Biograph mCT64 PET/CT scanner using NEMA IEC body phantom and Flangeless Esser PET phantom containing filled with $^{18}F$ and $^{68}Ga$. Emission scan duration(ESD) was set to 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5min/bed for $^{68}Ga$ and 1min/bed for $^{18}F$. The PET image were evaluated in terms of contrast, spatial resolution. Under same condition, The percentage of contrast recovery measured in the phantom ranged from 16.88% to 72.56% for $^{68}Ga$ and from 27.51% to 74.43% for $^{18}F$ and The FWHM value to evaluate spatial resolution was 10.96 mm for $^{68}Ga$ and 9.19 mm for $^{18}F$. For this study, $^{18}F$ produces better image contrast and spatial resolution than $^{68}Ga$ due to higher positron yield and lower positron energy ($^{18}F$: 96.86%, 633.5 keV, $^{68}Ga$: 88.9%, 1899 keV), The physical properties of PET tracer effect on the PET image. $^{68}Ga$ image applying ESD of 3, 4, 5min/bed were showed similar to $^{18}F$ image with ESD of 1min/bed. This study suggests that increasing ESD for acquiring $^{68}Ga$ PET image seem to be similar to $^{18}F$ image.

• Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.172-180
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• 2008

PET/CT fused image with anatomical and functional information have improved medical diagnosis and interpretation. This fusion has resulted in more precise localization and characterization of sites of radio-tracer uptake. However, a motion during whole-body imaging has been recognized as a source of image quality degradation and reduced the quantitative accuracy of PET/CT study. The respiratory motion problem is more challenging in combined PET/CT imaging. In combined PET/CT, CT is used to localize tumors and to correct for attenuation in the PET images. An accurate spatial registration of PET and CT image sets is a prerequisite for accurate diagnosis and SUV measurement. Correcting for the spatial mismatch caused by motion represents a particular challenge for the requisite registration accuracy as a result of differences in PET/CT image. This paper provides a brief summary of the materials and methods involved in multiple investigations of the correction for respiratory motion in PET/CT imaging, with the goal of improving image quality and quantitative accuracy.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
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• 2002.09a
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• pp.322-323
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• 2002

Partial volume averaging effect of PET data influences on the accuracy of quantitative measurements of regional brain metabolism because spatial resolution of PET is limited. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of partial volume correction carried out on $^{18}$ F-PET images using Hoffman brain phantom. $^{18}$ F-PET Hoffman phantom images were co-registered to MR slices of the same phantom. All the MR slices of the phantom were then segmented to be binary images. Each of these binary images was convolved in 2 dimensions with the spatial resolution of the PET. The original PET images were then divided by the smoothed binary images in slice-by-slice, voxel-by-voxel basis resulting in larger PET image volume in size. This enlarged partial volume corrected PET image volume was multiplied by original binary image volume to exclude extracortical region. The evaluation of partial volume corrected PET image volume was performed by region of interests (ROI) analysis applying ROIs, which were drawn on cortical regions of the original MR image slices, to corrected and original PET image volume. From the ROI analysis, range of regional mean values increases of partial volume corrected PET images was 4 to 14%, and average increase for all the ROIs was about 10% in this phantom study. Hoffman brain phantom study was useful for the objective evaluation of the partial volume correction method. This MR-based correction method would be applicable to patients in the. quantitative analysis of FDG-PET studies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Computer Information Conference
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• 2023.07a
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• pp.179-181
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• 2023

본 논문에서는 GAN 기반의 영상 생성 방법론을 이용해 delayed PET 영상을 생성하는 연구를 수행하였다. PET은 양전자를 방출하는 방사성 동위원소를 표지한 방사성의약품의 체내 분포를 시각화함으로서 암 세포 진단에 이용되는 의료영상 기법이다. 하지만 PET의 스캔 과정에서 방사성의약품이 체내에 분포하는 데에 걸리는 시간이 오래 걸린다는 문제점이 존재한다. 따라서 본 연구에서는 방사성의약품이 충분히 분포되지 않은 상태에서 얻은 PET 영상을 통해 목표로 하는 충분히 시간이 지난 후에 얻은 PET 영상을 생성하는 모델을 GAN (generative adversarial network)에 기반한 image-to-image translation(I2I)를 통해 수행했다. 특히, 생성 전후의 영상 간의 영상 쌍을 고려한 paired I2I인 Pix2pix와 이를 고려하지 않은 unpaired I2I인 CycleGAN 두 가지의 방법론을 비교하였다. 연구 결과, Pix2pix에 기반해 생성한 delayed PET 영상이 CycleGAN을 통해 생성한 영상에 비해 영상 품질이 좋음을 확인했으며, 또한 실제 획득한 ground-truth delayed PET 영상과의 유사도 또한 더 높음을 확인할 수 있었다. 결과적으로, 딥러닝에 기반해 early PET을 통해 delayed PET을 생성할 수 있었으며, paired I2I를 적용할 경우 보다 높은 성능을 기대할 수 있었다. 이를 통해 PET 영상 획득 과정에서 방사성의약품의 체내 분포에 소요되는 시간을 딥러닝 모델을 통해 줄여 PET 이미징 과정의 시간적 비용을 절감하는 데에 크게 기여할 수 있을 것으로 기대된다.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.9
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• pp.117-122
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• 2018

In this study, HU(hounsfield unit) value of CT generated by dental prosthesis was measured according to the type of metal when PET-CT was performed, and the degree of distortion and standard deviation of SUV(standard uptake value) and to propose a method to reduce errors in image reading. PET-CT was performed using actual teeth, metal crown, gold crown, titanium, and zirconia dental prosthesis. Compared with general teeth, the SUV value increased with increasing HU value. The SUV value of metal crown, titanium, and zirconia was increased by 37% and the gold crown increased by 45.4%. In addition, image distortions were small in general teeth, metal crown, titanium, and zirconia, but hard curing of the gold crown occurred and image distortion occurred. Therefore, since the metal type of the dental prosthesis affects the SUV value, the NAC(non attenuation correction) PET image of the dental prosthesis can be helpful in the diagnosis of the patient using the gold material.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.17-21
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• 2016

Heterogeneity assessment of tumor in oncology is important for diagnosis of cancer and therapy. The aim of this study was performed assess heterogeneity tumor region in PET image using texture analysis. For assessment of heterogeneity tumor in PET image, we inserted sphere phantom in torso phantom. Cu-64 labeled radioisotope was administrated by 156.84 MBq in torso phantom. PET/CT image was acquired by PET/CT scanner (Discovery 710, GE Healthcare, Milwaukee, WI). The texture analysis of PET images was calculated using occurrence probability of gray level co-occurrence matrix. Energy and entropy is one of results of texture analysis. We performed the texture analysis in tumor, liver, and background. Assessment textural features of region-of-interest (ROI) in torso phantom used in-house software. We calculated the textural features of torso phantom in PET image using texture analysis. Calculated entropy in tumor, liver, and background were 5.322, 7.639, and 7.818. The further study will perform assessment of heterogeneity using clinical tumor PET image.