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The reduction of artifacts due to metal hip implants in CT-attenuation corrected PET images from hybrid PET/CT scanners

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Abstract

CT beam hardening artifacts near metal hip implants may erroneously enhance or diminish radiotracer uptake following CT attenuation correction (AC) of PET images. An artifact reduction algorithm (ARA) was developed to reduce metal artifacts in CT-based AC-PET. The algorithm employed a Bayes classifier to identify beam-hardening artifacts, followed by a partial correction of the attenuation map. ARA was implemented on phantom and patient 18F-FDG studies using a clinical PET/CT scanner. In phantom studies ARA successfully removed two artifacts of erroneously elevated uptake near a stainless steel hip prosthesis which were depicted in the standard CT-AC PET. ARA has also identified two targets absent on the scanner PET images. Target-to-background ratios were 1.5–3 times higher for ARA-PET than scanner images. In a patient study, metal artifacts were of lower intensity in ARA-PET as compared to standard images. Potentially, ARA may improve detectability of small lesions located near metal hip implants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, 32000, Haifa, Israel

    John A. Kennedy & Haim Azhari

  2. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel

    Ora Israel, Alex Frenkel & Rachel Bar-Shalom

  3. Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

    Ora Israel & Rachel Bar-Shalom

Authors
  1. John A. Kennedy
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  2. Ora Israel
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  3. Alex Frenkel
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  4. Rachel Bar-Shalom
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  5. Haim Azhari
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Correspondence to Haim Azhari.

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Kennedy, J.A., Israel, O., Frenkel, A. et al. The reduction of artifacts due to metal hip implants in CT-attenuation corrected PET images from hybrid PET/CT scanners. Med Bio Eng Comput 45, 553–562 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-007-0188-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-007-0188-8

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