STIR: software for tomographic image reconstruction release 2

We present a new version of STIR (Software for Tomographic Image Reconstruction), an open source object-oriented library implemented in C++ for 3D positron emission tomography reconstruction. This library has been designed such that it can be used for many algorithms and scanner geometries, while being portable to various computing platforms. This second release enhances its flexibility and modular design and includes additional features such as Compton scatter simulation, an additional iterative reconstruction algorithm and parametric image reconstruction (both indirect and direct). We discuss the new features in this release and present example results. STIR can be downloaded from http://stir.sourceforge.net

An object-oriented library for 3D PET reconstruction using parallel computing

Summary. We present a object-oriented library of C++ features for 3D PET reconstruction. This library has been designed so that it can be used for many algorithms and scanner geometries. Its flexibility, portability and modular design have helped greatly to (a) develop new iterative algorithms, (b) compare iterative and analytic methods using simulated, phantom and patient data, (c) adapt and apply the developed reconstruction algorithms to different designs of tomographs. As 3D iterative reconstruction algorithms are time consuming, the library contains classes and functions to run parts of the reconstruction in parallel, using parallel platforms with a distributed memory architecture

Development of a simulation platform for the evaluation of PET neuroimaging protocols in epilepsy

Monte Carlo simulation of PET studies is a reference tool for the evaluation and standardization of PET protocols. However, current Monte Carlo software codes require a high degree of knowledge in physics, mathematics and programming languages, in addition to a high cost of time and computational resources. These drawbacks make their use difficult for a large part of the scientific community. In order to overcome these limitations, a free and an efficient web-based platform was designed, implemented and validated for the simulation of realistic brain PET studies, and specifically employed for the generation of a wellvalidated large database of brain FDG-PET studies of patients with refractory epilepsy