Convergent ADMM Plug and Play PET Image Reconstruction

In this work, we investigate hybrid PET reconstruction algorithms based on coupling a model-based variational reconstruction and the application of a separately learnt Deep Neural Network operator (DNN) in an ADMM Plug and Play framework. Following recent results in optimization, fixed point convergence of the scheme can be achieved by enforcing an additional constraint on network parameters during learning. We propose such an ADMM algorithm and show in a realistic [18F]-FDG synthetic brain exam that the proposed scheme indeed lead experimentally to convergence to a meaningful fixed point. When the proposed constraint is not enforced during learning of the DNN, the proposed ADMM algorithm was observed experimentally not to converge.