A technique for the correction of scattered radiation in a PET system using time-of-flight information.

The time-of-flight information has been used in the development of a correction technique for the effects of radiation scattering in a positron emission tomography system. A two-dimensional function describing the scattered radiation distribution is added to the response of the system. A deconvolution filter that depends on parameters that were experimentally determined from measurements of a linear source located in a scattering medium is derived. The method was tested on cold spot cylindrical phantoms. The relative intensity of events from scattered radiation is significantly reduced and the contrast is thus improved. This technique does not require any additional computing time and can be included in standard reconstruction procedure.