A simple contrast matching rule for osem reconstructed pet images with different time of flight resolution

Background: Time-of-Flight (TOF) is a leading technological development of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners. It reduces noise at the Maximum-Likelihood solution, depending on the coincidence–timing–resolution (CTR). However, in clinical applications, it is still not clear how to best exploit TOF information, as early stopped reconstructions are generally used. Methods: A contrast-recovery (CR) matching rule for systems with different CTRs and non-TOF systems is theoretically derived and validated using (1) digital simulations of objects with different contrasts and background diameters, (2) realistic phantoms of different sizes acquired on two scanners with different CTRs. Results: With TOF, the CR matching rule prescribes modifying the iterations number by the CTRs ratio. Without TOF, the number of iterations depends on the background dimension. CR matching was confirmed by simulated and experimental data. With TOF, image noise followed the square root of the CTR when the rule was applied on simulated data, while a significant reduction was obtained on phantom data. Without TOF, preserving the CR on larger objects significantly increased the noise. Conclusions: TOF makes PET reconstructions less dependent on background dimensions, thus, improving the quantification robustness. Better CTRs allows performing fewer updates, thus, maintaining accuracy while minimizing noise.