Attenuation correction synthesis for hybrid PET-MR scanners.

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.