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Attenuation Correction Synthesis for Hybrid PET-MR Scanners
Ninon Burgos1, Manuel Jorge Cardoso1,2, Marc Modat1,2, Stefano Pedemonte1, John Dickson3, Anna Barnes3, John S. Duncan4, David Atkinson5, Simon R. Arridge1, Brian F. Hutton3,6, and Sebastien Ourselin1,2
1Centre for Medical Image Computing, University College London, London, UK
2Dementia Research Centre, University College London, London, UK
3Institute of Nuclear Medicine, University College London, London, UK
4Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy, UCL IoN, London, UK
5Centre for Medical Imaging, University College London, London, UK
6Centre for Medical Radiation Physics, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia
Abstract. The combination of functional and anatomical imaging technologies such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Computed Tomography (CT) has shown its value in the preclinical and clinical fields. In PET/CT hybrid acquisition systems, CT-derived attenuation maps enable a more accurate PET reconstruction. However, CT provides only very limited soft-tissue contrast and exposes the patient to an additional radiation dose. In comparison, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) provides good soft-tissue contrast and the ability to study functional activation and tissue microstructures, but does not directly provide patient-specific electron density maps for PET reconstruction.
The aim of the proposed work is to improve PET/MR reconstruction by generating synthetic CTs and attenuation-maps. The synthetic images are generated through a multi-atlas information propagation scheme, locally matching the MRI-derived patient’s morphology to a database of pre-acquired MRI/CT pairs. Results show improvements in CT synthesis and PET reconstruction accuracy when compared to a segmentation method using an Ultrashort-Echo-Time MRI sequence.
LNCS 8149, p. 147 ff.
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© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013