Breath gating of cardiac PET using 13N-NH3: An optimization for dynamic analysis

Martin Lyngby Lassen

AbstractIn this project a correction of the breath-induced movement of the heart for dynamic PET-scans is investigated. The scans in this project was carried out using 13N-NH3 on two dierent PET/CT scanners: a Siemens Biograph 64 and a Siemens mCT PET/CT scanner, respectively. The dynamic analyses are used in the clinic to obtain information on the perfusion in the heart. From the findings in the perfusion it is possible to estimate whether the patient has a disease or not, and to distinguish dierent diseases. The dynamic analysis is traditionally carried out using a non-gated set-up in which it is impossible to correct for the breath induced movements of the heart. It is estimated that a correction for these motions will improve the dynamic analysis, as the gating might change both the estimated ow values inside a defect, and even change the size and outline of the defect.
In this project the breath-motion was estimated using an affine transformation on the obtained images, from which the translation, the rotation, scaling and torsion of the heart is found and corrected for. The method was tried on 6 patients who are known to suffer from different heart defects which alters the perfusion in the heart.
The results from the breath-motion corrected data were compared to a non breath-gated gold standard to validate the effect of the gating protocol. The estimated flows were changed for all the patients, when analysed using the breath-gated set-up. The changes in the flow were explainable by analyzing the correcting parameters. The results were furthermore analysed by statistical analyses of the measured perfusion values and a blind test of the measured flows.
TypeMaster's thesis [Academic thesis]
Year2012
PublisherTechnical University of Denmark, DTU Informatics, E-mail: reception@imm.dtu.dk
AddressAsmussens Alle, Building 305, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
SeriesIMM-M.Sc.-2012-04
NoteDTU supervisor: Rasmus Larsen, rl@imm.dtu.dk, DTU Informatics
Electronic version(s)[pdf]
Publication linkhttp://www.imm.dtu.dk/English.aspx
BibTeX data [bibtex]
IMM Group(s)Image Analysis & Computer Graphics