Methods and systems for axially segmenting positron emission tomography data

A Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging system comprising:

• a detector;
• and
• a processor coupled to the detector, the processor programmed to
• receive an input defining a scan window having a predetermined length along an examination axis of the PET imaging system, the scan window corresponding to a region of interest to be continuously scanned by the PET imaging system;
• define at least two data bins corresponding to two separate scan regions within the scan window;
• define a transition region that overlaps a portion of each of the separate scan regions within the scan window, the transition region having a width that is shorter than a length of the scan window;
• bin emission data acquired within the transition region into the two data bins;
• bin emission data acquired from outside the transition region into one of the two data bins;
• and
• reconstruct an image using the emission data in the two data bins.

A non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with a program programmed to instruct a computer to:

• receive an input defining a scan window having a predetermined length along an examination axis of the PET imaging system, the scan window corresponding to a region of interest to be continuously scanned by the PET imaging system;
• define at least two data bins corresponding to two separate scan regions within the scan window;
• define a transition region that overlaps a portion of each of the separate scan regions within the scan window, the transition region having a width that is shorter than a length of the scan window;
• bin emission data acquired within the transition region into the two data bins;
• bin emission data acquired from outside the transition region into one of the two data bins;
• and
• reconstruct an image using the emission data in the two data bins.