Method and apparatus for cardiac signal removal in data-driven respiratory gating in positron emission tomography systems

Abstract

A method for signal separation includes obtaining list mode data representing radiation detected during an imaging scan, the list mode data being affected by quasi-periodic motion of an imaging object; dividing the list mode data into first non-overlapping frames of a first frame length, and process the first frames to determine a cardiac cycle length; determining a second frame length, longer than the first frame length, based on the determined cardiac cycle length; re-binning the list mode data into overlapping frames having the second frame length, based on the non-overlapping frames having the first frame length; applying a principal component analysis (PCA) process on the re-binned list mode data having the second frame length to determine a respiratory waveform; determining a cardiac waveform using the determined respiratory waveform; and reconstructing an image based on the list mode data using the determined respiratory waveform and the determined cardiac waveform.