A machine learning method for fast and accurate characterization of depth-of-interaction gamma cameras

作者：Pedemonte Stefano^*; Pierce Larry; Van Leemput Koen

来源：Physics in Medicine and Biology, 2017, 62(21): 8376-8401.

DOI：10.1088/1361-6560/aa6ee5

• gamma camera
• position sensitive gamma detectors
• scintillator characterization
• maximum-likelihood estimation
• depth-of-interaction (DOI)
• manifold learning
• locally linear embedding

Measuring the depth-of-interaction (DOI) of gamma photons enables increasing the resolution of emission imaging systems. Several design variants of DOI-sensitive detectors have been recently introduced to improve the performance of scanners for positron emission tomography (PET). However, the accurate characterization of the response of DOI detectors, necessary to accurately measure the DOI, remains an unsolved problem. Numerical simulations are, at the state of the art, imprecise, while measuring directly the characteristics of DOI detectors experimentally is hindered by the impossibility to impose the depth-of-interaction in an experimental set-up. In this article we introduce a machine learning approach for extracting accurate forward models of gamma imaging devices from simple pencil-beam measurements, using a nonlinear dimensionality reduction technique in combination with a finite mixture model. The method is purely data-driven, not requiring simulations, and is applicable to a wide range of detector types. The proposed method was evaluated both in a simulation study and with data acquired using a monolithic gamma camera designed for PET (the cMiCE detector), demonstrating the accurate recovery of the DOI characteristics. The combination of the proposed calibration technique with maximum-a posteriori estimation of the coordinates of interaction provided a depth resolution of approximate to 1.14 mm for the simulated PET detector and approximate to 1.74 mm for the cMiCE detector. The software and experimental data are made available at http://occiput.mgh.harvard.edu/depthembedding/.

• 出版日期2017-11-7