New imaging technology may lead to the early detection of neurological illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, allowing doctors to diagnose and treat patients more swiftly. The super-resolution imaging technique combines position emission tomography (PET) with an external motion-tracking device to provide detailed brain images.
The patient’s undesired movements frequently hamper the quality of brain PET images during scanning. In this study, researchers used super-resolution to increase the quality of brain PET for early detection by harnessing the individuals’ generally unwanted head motion.
Using a PET scanner, the researchers conducted experiments on moving phantoms and non-human primates. An external motion tracking equipment continuously tracked head movement with exceptional precision. Without causing a stir, they also carried out static reference PET acquisitions. After recovering PET pictures and merging the data from the imaging devices, the researchers found that the PET images captured with movement had noticeably higher resolution than that achieved in the static reference scans.
This work demonstrates that obtaining PET images with higher resolution than the scanner’s resolution is possible by employing, perhaps counterintuitively, normally undesirable patient motion. The technique compensates for the negative effects of head motion on PET image quality. It uses the increased sampling information associated with imaging moving targets to improve effective PET resolution.
Related Content: One-Photon Confocal Fluorescence Imaging