General Electric Company

Hua Qian

Geng Fu

Jianjun Guo

Xiao Jin

Ravindra Mohan Manjeshwar

Dattesh Dayanand Shanbhag

Florian Wiesinger

Adrian Ivan

Hao Lai

Sandeep Suryanarayana Kaushik

Brian David Yanoff

Rakesh Mullick

Floribertus P M Heukensfeldt Jansen

Sangtae Ahn

Kris Filip Johan Jules Thielemans

Sheshadri Thiruvenkadam

Anne Menini

A silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) based detection system includes a plurality of scintillators, SiPMs, a front end circuit, adjustment circuits, and an energy and position processing unit. The SiPMs have a non-linear response to energy deposition corresponding to radiation detection. The adjustment circuit is configured to receive an analog signal from SiPMs, and to provide an adjusted analog signal, which is configured to simulate a signal corresponding to a linear response. The energy and position processing unit utilizes the adjusted signal to provide energy and position information of detected events in the detector block.

Systems and methods for detector output adjustment

A SiPM readout circuit includes a front-end circuit having amplifiers coupled to SiPM analog outputs, pixel readout channels coupled to amplifiers provide a timing signal representing gamma ray photon detection in individual SiPM, a block timing channel that creates a summed signal from all SiPMs, and generates a block timing signal and a validation signal, an energy channel that generates a summed energy signal and a two-dimensional position of the gamma ray photon detection in the block, and a control logic/processing circuit that performs a time stamp estimation method. Methods of determining the radiation event timing and a non-transitory computer-readable medium containing computer-readable instructions to implement the methods are disclosed.

Universal readout for silicon photomultiplier based detectors

Methods and systems are provided for medical imaging systems. In one embodiment, a method comprises estimating an external scatter contamination in emission data based on an estimated emission activity originating from anatomies outside a field-of-view (FOV) of a scanner, the anatomies identified based on an image segmentation analysis performed on an image generated in the imaging system, the image generated prior to acquiring the emission data. In this way, a scatter correction applied to the emission data may include both scatter originating within the FOV and outside the FOV, and hence may be more accurate.

Methods and systems for scatter correction in positron emission tomography

Embodiments of the invention are utilized to improve the timing performance of SiPM based PET detectors with light-sharing configuration. The universal readout design utilizes adaptive group readout to process noisy and slow signals generated by SiPM devices, and provides enhanced timing capabilities with simplified readout electronics.

Universal readout for light-sharing detector

A system and method for estimating image intensity bias and segmentation tissues is presented. The system and method includes obtaining a first image data set and at least a second image data set, wherein the first and second image data sets are representative of an anatomical region in a subject of interest. Furthermore, the system and method includes generating a baseline bias map by processing the first image data set. The system and method also includes determining a baseline body mask by processing the second image data set. In addition, the system and method includes estimating a bias map corresponding to a sub-region in the anatomical region based on the baseline body mask. Moreover, the system and method includes segmenting one or more tissues in the anatomical region based on the bias map.

System and method for image intensity bias estimation and tissue segmentation

Imaging system and method are presented. Emission scan (ES) and anatomical scan (AS) data corresponding to a target volume in a subject are received. One or more at least partial AS images are reconstructed using AS data. An image-space certainty (IC) map representing a confidence level (CL) for attenuation coefficients of selected voxels in AS images and a preliminary attenuation (PA) map based on AS images are generated. One or more of selected attenuation factors (AF) in projection-space are initialized based on PA map. A projection-space certainty (PC) map representing CL for the selected AF is generated based on IC map. An emission image of the target volume is initialized. The selected AF and emission image are iteratively updated based on the ES data, PC map, initial AF, and/or initial emission image. A desired emission image and/or AF values are determined based on the iteratively updated AF and/or emission image.

System and method for joint estimation of attenuation and activity information

Methods and systems for multiple scatter estimation in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) are provided. One method includes determining attenuation sinograms and determining a varying convolution kernel as a function of the attenuation sinograms, wherein the kernel varies in amplitude and width over a radial length of a PET imaging system. The method also includes using the varying convolution kernel to estimate multiple PET scatter.

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Clifton Park, NY, United States of America

Hua Qian