Preprocessing refers to the steps that are applied to the reconstructed image data prior to quantitative analysis. These steps, more or less in order are:
- Truncation of the data set (if processing a large data set such as from the HRRT).
- Image realignment (motion correction), which is more important for high resolution scanners such as the HRRT.
- Creation of a mean image (for coregistration)
- Partial volume correction (PVC)
- Drawing regions-of-interest (ROIs)
- Generating time-activity curves (TACs)
TACs are then used for quantitative analysis.
