Correction of myocardial artifact due to limited spatial resolution in PET

A kind of artifact in myocardial positron emission tomography (PET) is the count loss due to the limited spatial resolution of PET, which is also named as partial volume effect (PVE). A deconvolution method was developed to correct for the artifact, in which the counts were evaluated as a parameter in the convolution. One-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) models were used to create the convolution equation. Counts, background, myocardial wall position and thickness were parameters of the equation. The method needs non-linear fitting by an iterative process. Computer simulated myocardial images, PET image of phantoms and patient´s myocardial PET images were used for evaluating the method. For simulated images, the corrected recovery coefficient is between 0.97 and 1.10 for 2D model and is near 0.9 for 1D model. 2D model can be applied for myocardium as thin as 0.25 times of the system spatial resolution while 1D model is only for 1.5 times of it. For phantom images, the recovery coefficient of 2D is near 1.0 for different thickness of the myocardium. The iterating process converges for a wide range of different size of myocardium and noise levels. 2D model allows correction for PVE exactly even for very thin myocardium.