Date of Award

2006

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Program

Medical Biophysics

Supervisor

Dr. R. Glenn Wells

Second Advisor

Dr. Ting-Yim Lee

Third Advisor

Dr. Jerry Battista

Abstract

Heart disease is a leading cause of death in Canada, and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is the gold standard for determining the viability of heart tissue following a heart attack. PET images require correction for attenuation, that is, for signal absorption by patient tissues. Attenuation correction (AC), is done via a transmission scan such as Computed Tomography (CT). However, due to the differences between PET and CT scan durations, respiration-induced motion can cause temporal mismatches leading to errors in the reconstructed PET image. This study compares the magnitude of these errors when single-phase CT, respiratory-averaged CT, and 4D CT are used for AC of cardiac PET in an in vivo canine model. The respiratory-averaged CT correction produced maximum percentage differences that were 7 times less than those produced by the single-phase correction. Using a respiratory-averaged CT may provide an accurate form of AC for cardiac PET imaging.

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