Title
PET Reconstruction with non-Negativity Constraint in Projection Space: Optimization Through Hypo-Convergence.
Abstract
Standard positron emission tomography (PET) reconstruction techniques are based on maximum-likelihood (ML) optimization methods, such as the maximum-likelihood expectation-maximization (MLEM) algorithm and its variations. Most methodologies rely on a positivity constraint on the activity distribution image. Although this constraint is meaningful from a physical point of view, it can be a source of bias for low-count/high-background PET, which can compromise accurate quantification. Existing methods that allow for negative values in the estimated image usually utilize a modified log-likelihood, and therefore break the data statistics. In this paper, we propose to incorporate the positivity constraint on the projections only, by approximating the (penalized) log-likelihood function by an adequate sequence of objective functions that are easily maximized without constraint. This sequence is constructed such that there is <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">hypo-convergence</italic> (a type of convergence that allows the convergence of the maximizers under some conditions) to the original log-likelihood, hence allowing us to achieve maximization with positivity constraint on the projections using simple settings. A complete proof of convergence under weak assumptions is given. We provide results of experiments on simulated data where we compare our methodology with the alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM) method, showing that our algorithm converges to a maximizer, which stays in the desired feasibility set, with faster convergence than ADMM. We also show that this approach reduces the bias, as compared with MLEM images, in necrotic tumors—which are characterized by cold regions surrounded by hot structures—while reconstructing similar activity values in hot regions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2020
10.1109/TMI.2019.2920109
IEEE transactions on medical imaging
Keywords
Field
DocType
Image reconstruction,Maximum likelihood estimation,Positron emission tomography,Convergence,Linear programming,Optimization,Phase locked loops
Convergence (routing),Mathematical optimization,Negativity effect,Mathematics,Maximization,Constrained optimization
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
39
1
0278-0062
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Alexandre Bousse182.96
Matias Courdurier211.07
Elise Emond300.34
Kris Thielemans433.43
Brian F. Hutton59814.33
Pablo Irarrazaval6298.78
Visvikis, D.7124.12