Low-dose interpolated average CT for attenuation correction in cardiac PET/CT

Because of the advantages in the use of high photon flux and thus the short scan times of CT imaging, the traditional 68Ge scans for positron emission tomography (PET) image attenuation correction have been replaced by CT scans in the modern PET/CT technology. The combination of fast CT scan and slow PET scan often causes image misalignment between the PET and CT images due to respiration motion. Use of the average CT derived from cine CT images is reported to reduce such misalignment. However, the radiation dose to patients is higher with cine CT scans. This study introduces a method that uses breath-hold CT images and their interpolations to generate the average CT for PET image attenuation correction. Breath-hold CT sets are taken at end-inspiration and end-expiration. Deformable image registration is applied to generate a voxel-to-voxel motion matrix between the two CT sets. The motion is equally divided into 5 steps from inspiration to expiration and 5 steps from expiration to inspiration, generating a total of 8 phases of interpolated CT sets. An average CT image is generated from all the 10 phase CT images, including original inhale/exhale CT and 8 interpolated CT sets. Quantitative comparison shows that the reduction of image misalignment artifacts using the average CT from the interpolation technique for PET attenuation correction is at a similar level as that using cine average CT, while the dose to the patient from the CT scans is reduced significantly. The interpolated average CT method hence provides a low dose alternative to cine CT scans for PET attenuation correction.