Patent ID: 8440976

Claim:
A method of imaging a region of interest of an object, the region of interest having an axial extent greater than an axial field of view of a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner, the method comprising: determining a minimum number of successive overlapping scans of the PET scanner necessary to image at least the axial extent of the region of interest, wherein each scan of the successive scans has a same axial length equal to the axial field of view of the PET scanner, and each scan overlaps an adjacent scan by a fixed percentage of the axial length of each scan; determining a total amount of excess scanning length of the successive scans based on the minimum number of successive scans determined in the determining step, the axial extent of the region of interest, and the axial field of view; and determining an initial starting point of a first scan of the successive scans so that the total excess scanning length is equally allocated on each end of the region of interest in an axial direction.