Abstract
This study was conducted to evaluate the lesion detection capabilities of anatomically based maximum a posteriori (MAP) image reconstruction methods in emission computed tomography using the computer observer model. In lesion detection tasks, conventional anatomically based MAP reconstruction methods cannot preserve lesions not present in the anatomical image with high contrast and at the same time suppress noise in the background regions. We previously proposed a new anatomically based MAP reconstruction method called the SOS-MAP method, which is based on the spots-on-smooth image model in which the image is modeled by the sum of the smooth background image and the sparse spot image, and showed that the SOS-MAP method can overcome the above-mentioned drawback of conventional anatomically based MAP methods. However, the lesion detection capabilities of the SOS-MAP method remained to be clarified. In the present study, the computer observer model was used to evaluate the lesion detection capabilities of the SOS-MAP method, and it was found that the SOS-MAP method is superior to conventional anatomically based MAP methods for the detection of lesions.
