Correction of collimator aperture using a shift-variant deconvolution filter in gamma camera emission ct

We propose a new method which enables improved spatial resolution of a reconstructed image from a gamma camera emission CT(SPECT). SPECT images are blurred due to the effect of the collimator aperture. The blur effect changes with the geometrical structure of the collimator and with the distance between the rotational center of the gamma camera and the collimator surface. The acquired projection, affected by the collimator aperture, can be assumed to be the convolution of the ideal projection by the shift-variant blur functions. So the measured projection will be represented as a weighted summation of neighboring ideal projections of different angles and positions. From this standpoint, the blur function can be defined as a function of a common spatial frequency in the Fourier domain. Hence the deconvolution of the measured projection was circularly processed in the frequency domain. The effectiveness of the method was proven by simulations involving various aperture angles and the distances between the collimator surface and the rotational center.