Partial volume correction for improved PET quantification in 18 F-NaF imaging of atherosclerotic plaques

Accurate quantification of plaque imaging using 18f-naf pet requires partial volume correction (pvc). pvc of pet data was implemented by the use of a local projection (lp) method. lp-based pvc was evaluated with an image quality (nema) and with a thorax phantom with “plaque-type” lesions of 18-36 ml. the validated pvc method was then applied to a cohort of 17 patients, each with at least one plaque in the carotid or ascending aortic arteries. in total, 51 calcified (hu > 110) and 16 non-calcified plaque lesions (hu < 110) were analyzed. the lesion-to-background ratio (lbr) and the relative change of lbr (δlbr) were measured on pet. following pvc, lbr of the spheres (nema phantom) was within 10% of the original values. lbr of the thoracic lesions increased by 155% to 440% when the lp-pvc method was applied to the pet images. in patients, pvc increased the lbr in both calcified [mean = 78% (−8% to 227%)] and non-calcified plaques [mean = 41%, (−9%-104%)]. pvc helps to improve lbr of plaque-type lesions in both phantom studies and clinical patients. better results were obtained when the pvc method was applied to images reconstructed with point spread function modeling.