Determination of both mechanical and electronic shifts in cone beam SPECT

The difference between the displacement of the centre of rotation (mechanical shift, MS) and the electronic centring misalignment (electronic shift, ES) in cone beam SPECT is evaluated. A method is proposed to determine both MS and ES using the centroid of a projected point source sampled over 360oC and the Marquardt non-linear fitting algorithm. Both shifts are characterized by two orthogonal components. This method is verified using Monte Carlo simulated point source data with different combinations of mechanical and electronic shifts. Both shifts can be determined correctly. The proposed method was also applied to the authors' cone beam SPECT system to determine both shifts as well as the focal length. The determined ES parameters are then used to correct the projections and the MS parameters are incorporated into a reconstruction algorithm. The point source image are reconstructed and the image resolutions with and without the shift corrections are measured. (Author)