Fast GPU Fitting of Kinetic Models for Dynamic PET

We address the problem of quickly and accurately fitting compartmental models to large numbers of measurements, with application to dynamic positron emission tomograph imaging. An analytic method of calculating the model output function is developed, and compared to the numerical method used by COMKAT [5], the de facto kinetic modeling software. A performance increase of over 130 is demonstrated. Also, we describe a GPU implementation of the Levenberg–Marquardt optimization algorithm, using the developed analytic formulation, and apply it to compartmental model fitting. A fitting rate of 74,906 TAC/s was achieved, allowing a dPET volume to be fit in 13.8 seconds. In comparison, COMKAT would take 21.5 days to perform the same fitting.