Preconstruction restoration of myocardial single photon emission computed tomography images.

A restoration scheme for single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images that performs restoration before reconstruction (preconstruction restoration) from planar (projection) images is presented. A comparison is performed between results obtained in this study and those obtained by a method reported previously where the restoration is performed after reconstruction (postreconstruction restoration). The filters investigated are the Wiener and power spectrum equalization filters. These filters are applied to SPECT images of a hollow cylinder phantom and a cardiac phantom acquired on a Siemens Rota camera. Quantitative analyses of the results are performed through measurements of contrast ratios and root mean squared errors. The preconstruction restored images show a significant decrease in the root mean squared error and an increase in contrast over the postconstruction restored images.