Attenuation Correction Synthesis for Hybrid PET-MR Scanners: Application to Brain Studies

Author

Burgos, Ninon ; Cardoso, M. Jorge ; Thielemans, Kris ; Modat, Marc ; Pedemonte, Stefano ; Dickson, John ; Barnes, A. ; Ahmed, Rizwan ; Mahoney, Colin J. ; Schott, Jonathan M. ; Duncan, James S. ; Atkinson, David ; Arridge, Simon R. ; Hutton, Brian F. ; Ou

Author_Institution

Centre for Med. Image Comput., Univ. Coll. London, London, UK

Volume

33

Issue

12

fYear

2014

fDate

Dec. 2014

Firstpage

2332

Lastpage

2341

Abstract

Attenuation correction is an essential requirement for quantification of positron emission tomography (PET) data. In PET/CT acquisition systems, attenuation maps are derived from computed tomography (CT) images. However, in hybrid PET/MR scanners, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images do not directly provide a patient-specific attenuation map. The aim of the proposed work is to improve attenuation correction for PET/MR scanners 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 MRI/CT pairs, using a local image similarity measure. Results show significant improvements in CT synthesis and PET reconstruction accuracy when compared to a segmentation method using an ultrashort-echo-time MRI sequence and to a simplified atlas-based method.

Keywords

biomedical MRI; biomedical equipment; brain; computerised tomography; data acquisition; image matching; image reconstruction; medical image processing; neurophysiology; positron emission tomography; visual databases; CT synthesis; MRI image; MRI-derived patient morphology matching; PET reconstruction accuracy; PET-CT acquisition system; attenuation correction improvement; attenuation correction synthesis; brain study application; computed tomography image; database of MRI-CT pair matching; hybrid PET-MR scanner; local image similarity measure; magnetic resonance imaging; multi-atlas information propagation scheme; patient-specific attenuation map; positron emission tomography data quantification; segmentation method; simplified atlas-based method; synthetic CT image generation; synthetic attenuation map generation; ultrashort-echo-time MRI sequence; Accuracy; Attenuation; Bones; Computed tomography; Databases; Magnetic resonance imaging; Positron emission tomography; Attenuation correction; image synthesis; positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance (PET/MR);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Medical Imaging, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0278-0062

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMI.2014.2340135

Filename

6858020