Abstract
This paper reports the results of a preliminary study evaluating the feasibility and performance of a first whole body hybrid PET/MR scanner allowing sequential acquisition of co-registered MR and PET images. Sixty-two patients underwent whole body PET/MR imaging immediately after a clinical PET/CT. The hybrid device consists of a 3T MR and a time-of-flight PET scanner sharing a single bed allowing sequential acquisition of co-registered MR and PET images. Imaging protocols included a whole body MR used for attenuation correction of PET followed by high-resolution diagnostic MR. Image analysis included visual identification of radiotracer uptake in tumors and measurement of standardized uptake values (SUV) in tumoral lesions and in normal organs. PET images acquired in the PET/MR with a delay of 85±22minutes (range 49–120minutes) showed perfect correlation and identical diagnostic quality compared to PET/CT. In 42 patients (68%), additional high-resolution MR sequences were acquired for clinical diagnosis showing excellent quality without any visually detectable artifacts. SUV measurements of tumor lesions obtained after correction with MR attenuation maps showed an excellent correlation with PET/CT (R2=0.89 and R2=0.95 for mean and maximum tissue uptake respectively). Due to the delay between the two studies, changes in tracer uptake biodistribution of normal tissue were observed. Our preliminary data show that whole body PET/MR is clinically applicable in oncologic patients yielding a comparable diagnostic performance as PET/CT with respect to lesion detection and localization.
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