Robust whole-body PET image denoising using 3D diffusion models: evaluation across various scanners, tracers, and dose levels

PurposeWhole-body PET imaging plays an essential role in cancer diagnosis and treatment but suffers from low image quality. Traditional deep learning-based denoising methods work well for a specific acquisition but are less effective in handling diverse PET protocols. In this study, we proposed and validated a 3D Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (3D DDPM) as a robust and universal solution for whole-body PET image denoising.MethodsThe proposed 3D DDPM gradually injected noise into the images during the forward diffusion phase, allowing the model to learn to reconstruct the clean data during the reverse diffusion process. A 3D convolutional network was trained using high-quality data from the Biograph Vision Quadra PET/CT scanner to generate the score function, enabling the model to capture accurate PET distribution information extracted from the total-body datasets. The trained 3D DDPM was evaluated on datasets from four scanners, four tracer types, and six dose levels representing a broad spectrum of clinical scenarios.ResultsThe proposed 3D DDPM consistently outperformed 2D DDPM, 3D UNet, and 3D GAN, demonstrating its superior denoising performance across all tested conditions. Additionally, the model's uncertainty maps exhibited lower variance, reflecting its higher confidence in its outputs.ConclusionsThe proposed 3D DDPM can effectively handle various clinical settings, including variations in dose levels, scanners, and tracers, establishing it as a promising foundational model for PET image denoising. The trained 3D DDPM model of this work can be utilized off the shelf by researchers as a whole-body PET image denoising solution. The code and model are available at https://github.com/Miche11eU/PET-Image-Denoising-Using-3D-Diffusion-Model.