PET detector system with improved capabilities for quantification

A method, for nuclear medical imaging, comprising:

• detecting gamma (γ) radiation events on one of more radiation detector modules arranged about an examination region;
• discriminating between scattered and non-scattered detected radiation events;
• reconstructing a lower resolution first image representation of the examination region using both the scattered and the non-scatter detected radiation events;
• reconstructing a higher resolution second image representation of the examination region using the non-scattered detected radiation events;
• combining the first and second image representations into a combined image representation;
• and,
• displaying the combined image representation.

A nuclear medical imaging system, including:

• at least one radiation detector module to detect radiation from an examination region;
• a scatter detector which detects and labels both scattered and non-scattered radiation events;
• a list mode memory which stores detection locations of the detected radiation events with their respective scatter/non-scatter labels;
• and
• at least one processor which reconstructs the detected scattered and non-scattered radiation events into a first image representation and at least some of the non-scattered radiation events into a second image representation, which processes the first and second image representations into a diagnostic image representation for display, and which quantifies at least one metric of a selected structure of interest in one of the diagnostic image representation.

A method for nuclear medical imaging, comprising:

• detecting gamma (γ) radiation events on one of more radiation detector modules arranged about an examination region;
• discriminating between scattered and non-scattered detected radiation events;
• reconstructing a lower resolution first image representation using both the scattered and non-scattered radiation events;
• reconstructing a higher resolution second image representation using at least a portion of the non-scattered radiation events;
• and
• displaying a combination of the first and seconding image representations.