Noise Distribution Due to Emission and Transmission Statistics in Positron Emission Tomography

Noise contributions to PET image data are due mainly to the limited counting statistics in the profiles of both emission and transmission scans. Statistical variance "images" were obtained with the UBC/TRIUMF PETT VI tomograph representing noise due to the corresponding emission and transmission scans. Phantom measurement variances were compared with those predicted analytically and found to be in close agreement. Variance contributions due to transmission noise are found to be most pronounced towards the centre of the image.