Joint Correction of Attenuation and Scatter Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) for Time-of-Flight PET

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNN) have demonstrated its capability to convert MR image to pseudo CT for PET attenuation correction in PET/MRI. Conventionally, attenuated events are corrected in sinogram space using attenuation maps derived from CT or MR-derived pseudo CT. Separately, scattered events are iteratively estimated by a 3D model-based simulation using down-sampled attenuation and emission sinograms. However, no studies have investigated joint correction of attenuation and scatter using DCNN in image space. Therefore, we aim to develop and optimize a DCNN model for attenuation and scatter correction (ASC) simultaneously in PET image space without additional anatomical imaging or time-consuming iterative scatter simulation. For the first time, we demonstrated the feasibility of directly producing PET images corrected for attenuation and scatter using DCNN (PET-DCNN) from noncorrected PET (PET-NC) images.