Abstract
Pinhole imaging can produce high-resolution image results due to its geometric characteristics. Combined with a single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), pinhole SPECT becomes a powerful functional imaging tool for small animals or in vivo objects. Conventionally, SPECT imaging used filtered back projection (FBP) method for image reconstruction. Although the FBP method is frequently used in clinics, the reconstructed images with FBP still have some unfavorable problems such as artifacts. In this work, we describe a fully three-dimensional statistical model for SPECT data, and develop a fast iterative image reconstruction algorithm. We combine the real pinhole geometry and statistical image reconstruction algorithm to obtain high quality image. The results in simulation experiments show that the reconstructed images have nice properties in maintaining accuracy of tracer uptake, image uniformity, and positions of point source and edges. The proposed pinhole SPECT imaging method can produce high quality three-dimensional image for the small animal studies.