Spatially-variant image-based modeling of PSF deformations with application to a limited angle geometry from a dual-panel breast-PET imager

Dual-panel PET system configuration can lead to spatially variable point-spread functions (PSF) of considerable deformations due to depth-of-interaction effects and limited angular coverage. If not modelled properly, these effects result in decreased and inconsistent recovery of lesion activity across the field-of-view (FOV), as well as mispositioning of lesions in the reconstructed image caused by strong PSF asymmetries. We implemented and evaluated models of such PSF deformations with spatially-variant image-based resolution modeling (IRM) within reconstruction (varRM) using the Direct Image REConstruction for Time-of-flight (DIRECT) method and within post-reconstruction deconvolution methods. In addition, DIRECT reconstruction was performed with a spatially-invariant IRM (invRM) and without resolution modeling (noRM) for comparison. The methods were evaluated using simulated data for a realistic breast model with a set of 5 mm lesions located throughout the FOV of a dual-panel Breast-PET scanner. We simulated high-count data to focus on the ability of each method to correctly recover the PSF deformations, and a clinically realistic count level to assess the impact of low count data on the quantitative performance of the evaluated techniques. Performance of the methods evaluated herein was assessed by comparing lesion activity recovery (%BIAS), consistency (%SD) across the FOV, overall error (%RMSE), and recovery of each lesion location. As expected, all techniques using IRM provide considerable improvement over the noRM reconstruction. For the high-count cases, the overall quantitative performance of all IRM techniques, whether within reconstruction or within post-reconstruction, is similar if the lesion location misplacements are ignored. However, invRM provides less consistent performance on activity across lesions and is not able to recover accurate lesion locations. For a clinically realistic count level, varRM reconstruction consistently outperforms all compared approaches, while the post-reconstruction IRM approaches exhibit higher %SD and %RMSE values due to being more affected by the data noise than the within-reconstruction IRM approaches. (paper)