Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41627695›Full record

ArticleEJNMMI physics2026

Generative restoration for cardiac PET attenuation correction: a two-stage 3D DDIM framework optimizing fidelity and clinical controllability.

Junhang Deng, Hao Sun, Haifeng Wang, Xiaotong Hong, Weiping Xu, Fan Wang, Jianhua Ma, Chunfeng Lian, Lijun Lu

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in EJNMMI physics, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

9 authors.

Junhang Deng *School of Mathematics and Statistics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China.
Hao Sun *School of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, 1023 Shatai Road, Guangzhou, 510515, China.
Haifeng WangSchool of Mathematics and Statistics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China.
Xiaotong HongSchool of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, 1023 Shatai Road, Guangzhou, 510515, China.
Weiping XuPET Center, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital (Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences), Southern Medical University, 106 Zhongshan Er Road, Guangzhou, 510080, China.
Fan WangKey Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China.
Jianhua MaKey Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China. jhma@xjtu.edu.cn.
Chunfeng LianSchool of Mathematics and Statistics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, 710049, China. chunfeng.lian@xjtu.edu.cn.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9319-6633
Lijun LuSchool of Biomedical Engineering, Southern Medical University, 1023 Shatai Road, Guangzhou, 510515, China. ljlubme@gmail.com.

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China 12326616
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

purposeThis study aims to develop a two-stage 3D denoising diffusion implicit model (DDIM) framework for CT-free attenuation correction in cardiac PET imaging, enabling direct generation of attenuation-corrected (AC) images from non-attenuation-corrected (NAC) PET scans. The method is comprehensively validated using both [18F]FDG PET and [13N]ammonia cardiac PET datasets to demonstrate its clinical applicability across different perfusion and metabolic imaging protocols.

methodsThe framework employs a two-stage approach: (1) a noise-to-image DDIM was first pretrained on all available AC images (i.e., no need of paired NACs) to learn a diverse AC distributions, enabling the high-fidelity generation of AC images with varying appearances; (2) the pretrained model was fine-tuned with a limited set of paired NAC-AC images to form a conditional DDIM, ensuring anatomically aligned, controllable generation. The model architecture uses a 3D U-Net, trained on 224 paired NAC-AC and 396 unpaired AC images for [18F]FDG, and 608 paired NAC-AC images and 885 unpaired AC images for [13N]ammonia. Performance was evaluated through quantitative metrics (including NMAE, NRMSE, SSIM and PSNR) and visual assessment.

resultsThe proposed two-stage DDIM framework achieved excellent agreement with clinical CT-based attenuation correction (CT-AC), demonstrating superior correlation (slope = 0.78, [Formula: see text] = 0.95 for [18F]FDG; slope = 0.99, [Formula: see text]= 0.91 for [13N]ammonia) and lower errors compared to existing approaches. Ablation studies confirmed the benefits of both the two-stage training strategy and the incorporation of unpaired AC images, as evidenced by narrower confidence intervals in Bland-Altman analysis and reduced percentage errors.

conclusionThe two-stage 3D DDIM framework achieves performance comparable to clinical CT-AC while effectively leveraging unpaired data, demonstrating significant potential for robust cardiac PET attenuation correction.

Indexed as

Attenuation correctionCardiac PETDiffusion modelsTransfer learning

Identifiers

PMID41627695
PMCPMC12957678

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.