Department of Image Processing

Positron emission tomography (PET) is an imaging technique allowing to study functional processes in the body. Quality of the resulting 3-dimensional image depends on the amount of radioactivity in the injection dose, acquisition time and body habitus. To prevent redundant irradiation of the patient while retaining the desired quality of the image it is desirable to optimize the injection dose.

Nowadays the same methodology of determining the injection dose is recommended for coincident PET imaging as for single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). Experience of PET center of Na Homolce Hospital suggests that this practice is unsuitable and results in excessive irradiation of light-weight patients and children in particular. This observation is also supported by the fact that PET and SPECT use different emission registration techniques.

 Process of scanning with varying scanner parameters and body habitus (see the following images) can be simulated using Monte Carlo methods and simulated images can be studied in order to determine dependencies between the body parameters, injection dose and the resulting image quality.