Information analysis of single photon emission computed tomography with count losses.

An analysis is presented of the information transfer from emitter-space to detector-space in single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) systems. The analysis takes into account the fact that count loss side information is generally not available at the detector. Side information corresponds to the number gamma-rays lost deleted due to lack of interaction with the detector data. It is shown that the information transfer depends on the structure of the likelihood function of the emitter locations associated with the detector data. This likelihood function is the average of a set of ideal-detection likelihood functions, each matched to a particular set of possible deleted gamma-ray paths. A lower bound is derived for the information gain due to incorporating the count loss side information at the detector. This is shown to be significant when the mean emission rate is small or when the gamma-ray deletion probability is strongly dependent on emitter location. Numerical evaluations of the mutual information, with and without side information, associated with information-optimal apertures and uniform parallel-hole collimators are presented.