
4
Monte Carlo methods in
posterior analysis
This section introduces Monte Carlo (MC) methods. MC methods are used
[14, 85] in almost all areas of science and engineering. The Bayesian appr oaches
greatly benefit from using MC methods combined with the high computational
power of computers. This chapter is not mea nt a s a thorough discussion of MC
metho ds and a c omplete review can be found in Robert and Casella [85]. The
goal of this chapter is to introduce methods that are used in medical imaging
and are specific to nuclear imaging da ta analysis used in this book. In our ap-
plications the MC methods will be used for the calculation of approximations ...