Investigation of realistic PET simulations incorporating tumor patientˈs specificity using anthropomorphic models: Creation of an oncology database

Abstract

In this study, the authors investigated the input activity map heterogeneity in the GATE simulations of tumors with heterogeneous activity distribution. The most realistic heterogeneous tumors were obtained by inserting PVC activity distributions from the clinical image into the activity map of the simulation. Partial volume effect (PVE) can play a crucial role in the quantification of heterogeneity within tumors and have an important impact on applications such as patient follow-up during treatment and assessment of tumor response to therapy. The development of such a database incorporating patient anatomical and functional variability can be used to evaluate new image processing or analysis algorithms, while providing control of the ground truth, which is not available when dealing with clinical datasets. The database includes all images used and generated in this study, as well as the sinograms and the attenuation phantoms for further investigation. It is freely available to the interested reader of the journal at http://www.med.upatras.gr/oncobase/.

Preclinical positron emission tomography scanner based on a monolithic annulus of scintillator: initial design study

“…It has been extensively validated and used in numerous projects to evaluate new PET scanner designs. [48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63] Without simulations, it is very challenging to explore new scanner designs, due to the cost and complexity of creating prototype systems intended solely for design evaluation purposes. AnnPET was modeled using the C-PET GATE scanner definition with a 6 ns coincidence timing window and 15% energy resolution; positron transport, Compton scattering, and photoelectric interactions were included in the model.…”

Comparison of five cluster validity indices performance in brain [18F]FET‐PET image segmentation using k‐means

“…Therefore, using digital phantom as surrogate for real PET data is a common approach to know the ground truth . However, this requires constructing phantoms that reproduce the full range of PET imaging characteristics encountered in practice coming from data acquisition using complex scanner geometry and a reconstruction algorithm.…”

Exploitation of realistic computational anthropomorphic phantoms for the optimization of nuclear imaging acquisition and processing protocols

“…The resulting PET simulated data provided the 18 F-FDG bio-distribution of these 7 oncology patients. The heterogeneous activity distribution within the tumors was taken into account [17]. These simulations were repeated using 2 different clinical PET scanners (Biograph6 and Allegro).…”

“…Specifically 7 oncological patients were simulated using the clinical PET systems and the simulated data incorporate patient specific variability [17]. Initially the PET/CT clinical data were obtained from 7 patients.…”