Purpose: Patient motion during PET acquisition may affect measured time-activity curves, thereby reducing accuracy of tracer kinetic analyses. The aim of the present study was to evaluate different off-line frame-by-frame methods to correct patient motion, which is of particular interest when no optical motion tracking system is available or when older data sets have to be reanalysed.
Methods: Four different motion correction methods were evaluated. In the first method attenuation-corrected frames were realigned with the summed image of the first 3 min. The second method was identical, except that non-attenuation-corrected images were used. In the third and fourth methods non-attenuation-corrected images were realigned with standard and cupped transmission images, respectively. Two simulation studies were performed, based on [11C]flumazenil and (R)-[11C]PK11195 data sets, respectively. For both simulation studies different types (rotational, translational) and degrees of motion were added. Simulated PET scans were corrected for motion using all correction methods. The optimal method derived from these simulation studies was used to evaluate two (one with and one without visible movement) clinical data sets of [11C]flumazenil, (R)-[11C]PK11195 and [11C]PIB. For these clinical data sets, the volume of distribution (VT) was derived using Logan analysis and values were compared before and after motion correction.
Results: For both [11C]flumazenil and (R)-[11C]PK11195 simulation studies, optimal results were obtained when realignment was based on non-attenuation-corrected images. For the clinical data sets motion disappeared visually after motion correction. Regional differences of up to 433% in VT before and after motion correction were found for scans with visible movement. On the other hand, when no visual motion was present in the original data set, overall differences in VT before and after motion correction were <1.5 ± 1.3%.
Conclusion: Frame-by-frame motion correction using non-attenuation-corrected images improves the accuracy of tracer kinetic analysis compared to non-motion-corrected data. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00259-009-1193-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.