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PET/MRI: will it be an improvement over PET/CT in neurology?

Combined PET/CT has become a powerful imaging
tool in a variety of cancers. PET/CT can also be used in neurology, making it of special interest to our work at NeuroImage.

Recently, PET/MRI has been proposed as a promising alternative to existing dual modality PET/CT systems since it combines the most accurate functional imaging machine (PET) with the most accurate anatomical imaging machine (MRI). This permits better registration of the two images since they are both acquired at the same time.

On the other hand, there are new problems arising related to attenuation correction and motion.

PET/MRI acquisition times are longer than PET/CT, which creates motion artifacts, since the longer the subject is in the scanner the more likely the subject will move. Also, MRI doesn’t image bone very well, and this may be a problem when correcting for attenuation. By attenuation I mean the loss of signal due to other structures between the machine and the brain. This, in consequence will produce problems with quantification.

Putting the current situation in perspective, I think it is unfortunately still unclear whether a PET/MRI machine will be as beneficial as a PET/CT machine currently is.

For further information on PET/MRI please click on the following article:

Towards Quantitative PET/MRI: a review of MR-based attenuation correction techniques
Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging (2009)
36 (Suppl 1):S93–S104
DOI 10.1007/s00259-008-1007-7

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