EJNMMI Research (Mar 2019)

No significant difference found in PET/MRI CBF values reconstructed with CT-atlas-based and ZTE MR attenuation correction

  • Hidehiko Okazawa,
  • Tetsuya Tsujikawa,
  • Yoshifumi Higashino,
  • Ken-Ichiro Kikuta,
  • Tetsuya Mori,
  • Akira Makino,
  • Yasushi Kiyono

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13550-019-0494-9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Abstract Background Accurate attenuation correction (AC) is one of the most important issues to be addressed in quantitative brain PET/MRI imaging. Atlas-based MRI AC (AB-MRAC), one of the representative MRAC methods, has been used to estimate the skull attenuation in brain scans. The zero echo time (ZTE) pulse sequence is also expected to provide a better MRAC estimation in brain PET scans. The difference in quantitative measurements of cerebral blood flow (CBF) using H2 15O-PET/MRI was compared between the two MRAC methods, AB and ZTE. Method Twelve patients with cerebrovascular disease (4 males, 43.2 ± 11.7 years) underwent H2 15O-PET/MRI studies with a 3-min PET scan and MRI scans including the ZTE sequence. Eleven of them were also studied under the conditions of baseline and 10 min after acetazolamide administration, and 2 of them were followed up after several months interval. A total of 25 PET images were reconstructed as dynamic data using 2 sets of reconstruction parameters to obtain the image-derived input function (IDIF), the time-activity curves of the major cerebral artery extracted from images, and CBF images. The CBF images from AB- and ZTE-MRAC were then compared for global and regional differences. Results The mean differences of IDIF curves at each point obtained from AB- and ZTE-MRAC dynamic data were less than 5%, and the differences in time-activity curves were very small. The means of CBF from AB- and ZTE-MRAC reconstructions calculated using each IDIF showed differences of less than 5% for all cortical regions. CBF images from AB-MRAC tended to show greater values in the parietal region and smaller values in the skull base region. Conclusion The CBF images from AB- and ZTE-MRAC reconstruction showed no significant differences in regional values, although the parietal region tended to show greater values in AB-MRAC reconstruction. Quantitative values in the skull base region were very close, and almost the same IDIFs were obtained.

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