Fixed forced detection for fast SPECT Monte-Carlo simulation.

Fixed forced detection for fast SPECT Monte-Carlo simulation.
Phys Med Biol. 2017 Nov 29;:
Authors: Cajgfinger T, Rit S, Letang JM, Halty A, Sarrut D
Abstract
Monte-Carlo simulations of SPECT images are notoriously slow to converge due to
 the large ratio between the number of photons emitted and detected in the collimator.
 This work proposes a method to accelerate the simulations based on Fixed Forced
 Detection (FFD) combined with an analytical response of the detector. FFD is based
 on a Monte-Carlo simulation but forces the detection of a photon in each detector
 pixel weighted by the probability of emission (or scattering) and transmission to
 this pixel. The method was evaluated with numerical phantoms and on patient
 images. We obtained differences with analog Monte-Carlo lower than the statistical
 uncertainty. The overall computing time gain can reach up to 5 orders of magnitude.
 Source code and examples are available in the Gate V8.0 release.&#13.
PMID: 29185992 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

Source: Physics in Medicine and Biology - November 29, 2017 Category: Physics Authors: Cajgfinger T, Rit S, Letang JM, Halty A, Sarrut D Tags: Phys Med Biol Source Type: research