System and method for joint estimation of attenuation and activity information

US9474495B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• General Electric Company · US

Inventors

• Sangtae Ahn · Guilderland, US
• Ravindra Mohan Manjeshwar · Glenville, US
• Florian Wiesinger · Freising, DE
• Dattesh Dayanand Shanbhag · Bengaluru, IN
• Sandeep Kaushik · Bengaluru, IN
• Hua Qian · Clifton Park, US
• Anne Menini · Sunnyvale, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Dec 22, 2014
• Grant date: Oct 25, 2016
• Expiry date: May 13, 2035

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06T2211/464
• WIPO field: Medical technology
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

Imaging system and method are presented. Emission scan (ES) and anatomical scan (AS) data corresponding to a target volume in a subject are received. One or more at least partial AS images are reconstructed using AS data. An image-space certainty (IC) map representing a confidence level (CL) for attenuation coefficients of selected voxels in AS images and a preliminary attenuation (PA) map based on AS images are generated. One or more of selected attenuation factors (AF) in projection-space are initialized based on PA map. A projection-space certainty (PC) map representing CL for the selected AF is generated based on IC map. An emission image of the target volume is initialized. The selected AF and emission image are iteratively updated based on the ES data, PC map, initial AF, and/or initial emission image. A desired emission image and/or AF values are determined based on the iteratively updated AF and/or emission image.