The effect of material distribution of scatter correction for PVI

Scatter correction methods for positron volume imaging (PVI) are often developed and tested using cylindrical phantoms or Monte Carlo simulations of water cylinders. To determine the effect of more complex shapes and nonhomogeneity, the authors apply scatter correction techniques which incorporate different amounts of information about the material distribution in the Monte Carlo simulated data. The simulations use either geometric shapes or a voxelized density map to model the scattering material. Complex shape and material distribution have been found to have an effect on scatter correction. A method which incorporates a density map produces accurate scatter correction but is computationally expensive. Simpler methods can also provide effective scatter correction