Comparison of PET image quality using simultaneous PET/MR by attenuation correction with various MR pulse sequences

Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance (MR) scanning has the advantage of less additional exposure to radiation than does PET/computed tomography (CT). In particular, MR based attenuation correction (MR AC) can greatly affect the image quality of PET and is frequently obtained using various MR sequences. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to quantitatively compare the image quality between MR non-AC (MR NAC) and MR AC in PET images with three MR sequences. Percent image uniformity (PIU), percent contrast recovery (PCR), and percent background variability (PBV) were estimated to evaluate the quality of PET images with MR AC. Based on the results of PIU, 15.2% increase in the average quality was observed for PET images with MR AC than for PET images with MR NAC. In addition, 28.6% and 71.1% improvement in the average results of PCR and PBV respectively, was observed for PET images with MR AC compared with that with MR NAC. Moreover, no significant difference was observed among the average values using three MR sequences. In conclusion, the current study demonstrated that PET with MR AC improved the image quality and can be help diagnosis in all MR sequence cases. (C) 2019 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC.