PET/MR Imaging: Advances in Instrumentation and Quantitative Procedures

Abstract

in ic s. co m This is an exciting time for hybrid imaging, where the success of the combination of molecular information provided by PET and structural information provided by radiographic computed tomography (CT) motivated the combination of PET with other imaging modalities, such as MR imaging, ultrasound, optical imaging, and a few other diagnostic imaging techniques. There are some interesting lessons to be learned from the history of multimodality imaging. A number of pioneers in radiological sciences realized very early (during the 1950s to 1960s) the potential and both technical and clinical benefits of combined emission and transmission imaging. In most of the situations, the clinical demand triggered technical developments of softwareand hardware-based integration of various imaging modalities to respond to this need to address clinical questions. This fact explains the widespread adoption of image coregistration software, particularly in brain imaging, and integrated whole-body PET-CT scanners, which replaced stand-alone PET scanners, in clinical oncology. The rapid pace of hybrid imaging technology has been inspired by the desire of radiologists and nuclear medicine physicians to improve over existing state-of-the-art single-modality techniques in terms of clinical diagnosis, staging and restaging, therapy response monitoring, and radiation therapy treatment planning. The history of PET/MR imaging was an exception in the sense that the emergence of this hybrid imaging modality was driven by technology and