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Approaches to partial volume correction
using multi-modality data
Professor Brian F Hutton
Institute of Nuclear Medicine
University College London
Presented by Dr John C Dickson
Overview
Partial volume effects:
Resolution, motion, tissue fraction
Partial volume correction (clinical application)
Neurology, cardiology, oncology, pulmonary medicine
Partial volume correction:
Post-reconstruction approaches
Within-reconstruction approaches
Comparison of PVC methods
A patient-based synthetic database



Partial volume effects
Definition: When an object partially occupies the sensitive
volume of an imaging instrument (in space or time) the
observed signal will be reduced.
Partial volume effects (PVEs) degrade the quantitative accuracy
of PET and SPECT.
Partial volume effects
Partial volume effects
Caused by:
a) Finite spatial resolution of the scanner
Activity spills-out of (and into) regions, altering uptake values.
Result = union of spill-out & spill-in

Equivalent to object convolved with PSF
smaller object reduced max counts spill-out
spill-in
Partial volume effects
Any structure with a diameter of < 2.5 times the Full Width at
Half Maximum (FWHM) will be PV affected.
Recovery coefficient is dependent on object shape.
Effects of thickness on recovery
0.00
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
1.00
1.20
0.09 0.55 1.00 1.45 1.91 2.36 2.82 3.27
Thickness/FWHM
R
e
c
o
v
e
r
y
C
o
e
f f i c
i e
n
t ( P
e
a
k
)
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Caused by:
b) Motion of the object
Activity varies in time for specific voxels, altering apparent
mean uptake values.
Motion correction usually treated separately
Partial volume effects
c) Image sampling (the tissue fraction effect)
Either voxel partially occupied by homogeneous tissue
or tissue is heterogeneous.
Signal represents average of sub-voxel values
e.g. combination of tissue and air in lung.

Partial volume effects
sub-voxels
[Lambrou et al., Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 2011, 38:2238-2246].
Example of PV-corrected clinical data
Example of PV-corrected clinical data
PV-corrected clinical data
Cardiac: motion, variable wall thickness
Oncology:
heterogeneity;
unclear boundary
definition; motion,
Original SUV Corrected
HRCT
Pulmonary:
tissue fraction
(air); motion,
References
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PV Correction methods
PV correction techniques can generally be categorised as:
Post-reconstruction:
- Region-based (no image)
Geometric Transfer Matrix (GTM)
- Voxel-based
Deconvolution techniques Van-Cittert (VC) or Richardson-Lucy (RL)
Mller-Grtner (MG): grey/white matter only
Region-based voxel-wise (RBV) or iterative Yang (iY)
Within-reconstruction:
- Resolution model in system matrix
- Use of prior based on anatomical information
Eg. Bowsher prior
Region-based geometric transfer matrix
segment anatomical regions for structures or tissues
smooth regions to match emission resolution
define contribution of activities in structures
to each region (geometric transfer matrix: w
ij
)
solve for activity in each region (T
i
), given
measurement (t
j
)
i
i ij j
T w t
structure (i)
r
e
g
i
o
n

(
j
)

w
ij
RC: diagonal; spillover: other
0.8 0.1 0.1
0.05 0.65 0.1
0.05 0.1 0.65
2 3
1
2
1
3 2
1
3
2 3
1
2
3
1
Rousset et al., [1998] J Nucl Med, 39(5);90411.
Uses segmented patient MR to correct a target region e.g.
grey matter.
Voxel-based correction that uses a two or three class
segmentation.
Assumes that the uptake in a white matter can be accurately
described by the mean.
Assumes spill-over only between white and grey matter
Assumes known resolution (PSF)

[Mller-Grtner et al., J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 1992, 12(4):571-583].
.
) ( ) (
) ( )] ( [ ) ( )] ( [ ) (
) (
x h x p
x h x p C x h x p C x f
x f
GM
CSF CSF WM WM O
GM
PV correction: Mller-Grtner (MG) PV correction: Mller-Grtner (MG)
.
) ( ) (
) ( )] ( [ ) ( )] ( [ ) (
) (
x h x p
x h x p C x h x p C x f
x f
GM
CSF CSF WM WM O
GM
correction assumes uniform grey matter uptake
assumes white matter mean can be measured
[Mller-Grtner et al., J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 1992, 12(4):571-583].
PV correction: RBV (and iterative Yang)
MR / CT
PET/SPECT
Segment.
Parcellat.
Mask
Regional
average
PSF
convolution
True
PV
correction
factors
ratio
Corrected
~3 iterations
GTM
X
) ( ) (
) (
) ( ) (
x h x s
x s
x f x f
o c
) ( ) (
) (
x h x s
x s
Iterative Yang:
avoids GTM
use mean counts
for masked regions
[Thomas et al., Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2011, 38:1104-19.
Data driven: reblurred van Cittert (VC)
Originally used to deblur astronomical images.
Makes no assumption of anatomy or activity distribution.
Assumes Gaussian noise.
Minimize square difference between image and blurred
solution
Tends to amplify noise and under-correct due to need for
premature termination.
[Tohka and Reilhac, NeuroImage 2007, 39(4):1570-1584]
minimize
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Gaussian mixture deconvolution (GMD)

Extends on the van Cittert method by including prior information
Assumes each segmented MRI region has a contribution from a
mixture of possible tissue classes (e.g. Grey and white matter).
Within each class assume the activity has a Gaussian
distribution (more realistic and versatile than assuming uniform).
The resulting likelihood is used as a prior in a penalised van
Cittert deconvolution.
[Bousse et al., Phys Med Biol 2012, 57:6681-6705]
truth PET GMD
computing p(recon | data) difficult inverse problem
computing p(data | recon) easy forward problem
one wishes to find recon that
maximizes p(recon | data)
Bayes theorem:
p(recon | data) =
p(data | recon) p(recon)
p(data)
data
recon
~
Maximum likelihood (ML) Maximize ln( p(data | recon ) )
Maximize ln( p(data | recon ) ) + ln( p(recon) ) Maximum a-posteriori (MAP)
Iterative reconstruction
prior (penalty)
Adapted from Johan Nuyts, Leuven
Iterative reconstruction
Projection
Object
detector
(projection)
object
Courtesy: Panin et al
IEEE Trans Med Imaging
2006; 25:907-921
aims to recover resolution
requires many iterations
slow to compute
Modelling resolution
w/o resn model
with resn model
stabilises solution
better noise properties
Gibbs effect using resolution model
Iterations:

1, 7, 20



30, 50, 100



300, 500, 1000



Subsets: 10 OSEM with resolution model
- ringing due to Gibbs effect
- overshoot for small objects
No mask
mean


SD


With mask
mean


SD
Noisy data MAP reconstruction
Iterations: 1 7 20 30 50 100
Sub-sets: 10
Solid line: OS-MAP with resolution model,
quadratic prior favours smooth result
Dashed line: OS-MAP with resolution model,
quadratic prior within anatomical region
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Reconstruction: modified Bowsher prior
Supports similarity for N neighbouring pixels considered most similar on MRI.

MR / CT
Neighbour
selection
(Bowsher)
Choose
type of
smoothing
Reconstruction
algorithm
Iterative
reconstruction
j

k

E
(
j

k
)


Quadratic (smooth across
selected neighbours)

Huber (smooth but preserve
edges or large differences within
the selected neighbours)
Determine N neighbours
with closest MRI values.
Encourage smoothing
between the neighbouring
voxels determined by MRI
(above)
) , ( )) | ( log( V X M G X p
Apply selected smoothing
using a MAP-type algorithm:

Maximize
N=13/80 (5x5x5)
Vunckx K, Atre A, Baete K et al. Evaluation of three MRI-based anatomical priors for quantitative
PET brain imaging. IEEE Trans Med Imaging 2012; 31: 599-612.
V
G X
1 1
1 1
1 1
1
Within-recon: Bowsher prior
Bowsher
prior recon.
Truth FBP
Aim:
To compare post-reconstruction and within-reconstruction
based methods for PVC in brain PET.
Within-reconstruction
1. Asymmetric Bowsher Prior (BP)
Post-reconstruction
1. Region-based voxel-wise (RBV) correction
2. Iterative Yang (IY)
3. Reblurred van Cittert (RVC)
4. Markov Random fields in combination with Gaussian mixture
model (GMD)
Comparison of techniques using simulated
PET/MR data

PV comparison: results
RVC exhibits large increase in
noise.
RBV, IY over-correct the cortex.
BP and GMD achieve excellent
recovery.


Ground truth No correction (NC)
Reblurred van
Cittert (RVC)
Bowsher prior
Iterative Yang (IY)
Region-based voxel-wise
correction (RBV)
Gaussian mixture
deconvolution (GMD)
PV comparison: results
BP best overall performance (uses MRI directly).
<1% reduction due to misregistration;
Lesion contrast Registration error
preserves lesion contrast
Conclusion
PVC not normally applied routinely. Simultaneous PET/MRI
scanners reduce registration issues and facilitate correction.
Excellent cortical recovery and lesion contrast can be achieved
through PVC.
Techniques are sensitive to registration (and segmentation
errors).
Within-reconstruction techniques (e.g. Bowsher prior) produce
qualitatively superior images, but need tuning.
Post-reconstruction methods appear more sensitive to PET/MR
mis-registration.
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Thank You!
Acknowledgements
Ben Thomas, Kjell Erlandsson (IP / IY / RBV)
Alexandre Bousse (GMD)
Ivana Drobnjak (POSSUM)
Kathleen Vunckx (BP)
Anthonin Reilhac (RVC)
Simon Arridge
Sebastian Ourselin
john.dickson@ucl.ac.uk

35
Acknowledgements
Ben Thomas, Kjell Erlandsson (IP / IY / RBV)
Alexandre Bousse (GMD)
Ivana Drobnjak (POSSUM)
Kathleen Vunckx (BP)
Anthonin Reilhac (RVC)
Simon Arridge
Sebastian Ourselin

Introduction
Quantitative accuracy in PET and SPECT is limited due to the partial
volume effect (PVE) as a result of poor spatial resolution.
Partial volume correction (PVC) can be done using co-registered,
segmented high-resolution anatomical images, such as CT or MRI.
We have developed modified PVC correction methods that appear to
be more robust for brain PET analysis.
We are working particularly on new PVC methods that do not require
the assumption of uniformity within each region.

PVC: Historical overview
1979: Regional recovery correction (Hoffman et al.)
J Comput Assist Tomogr 3 299-308
1983: Regional cross-contamination corr. (Henze et al.)
J Nucl Med 24 987-96
1988: Voxel recovery correction (Videen et al.)
J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 8 662-70
1992: Voxel recovery and background corr. (Mller-Grtner et al.)
J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 12 571-83
1996: Voxel whole image correction (Yang et al.)
IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 43 3322-7
1998: Extension of Henze method to multiple regions (Rousset et al.)
J Nucl Med 39 904-11
2011: Combination of Yang and Rousset methods (Thomas et al.)
Europ J Nucl Med Mol Imag, 38:110419
2011: Yang method in projection space for SPECT (Erlandsson et al.)
Nucl Instr Meth A, 648:S85S88
3D-PET FDG: OSEM, no resolution model
3D-PET FDG: OSEM, with resolution model
MLEM MRI MAP
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Post-recon: Iterative Yang (IY)
40
MR / CT
PET/SPECT
Segment.
Parcellat.
Mask
Regional
average
PSF
convolution
True
PV
correction
factors
ratio
Corrected
~3 iterations
Within-recon: Iterative projection (IP)
41
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x f x f
o c
) (
)} ( {
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Iterative Yang Iterative Projection