Small animal, positron emission tomography-magnetic resonance imaging system based on a clinical magnetic resonance imaging scanner: evaluation of basic imaging performance

Raymond R. Raylman; Patrick Ledden; Alexander V. Stolin; Bob Hou; Ganghadar Jaliparthi; Peter F. Martone

doi:10.1117/1.JMI.5.3.033504

8 September 2018 Small animal, positron emission tomography-magnetic resonance imaging system based on a clinical magnetic resonance imaging scanner: evaluation of basic imaging performance

Raymond R. Raylman, Patrick Ledden, Alexander V. Stolin, Bob Hou, Ganghadar Jaliparthi, Peter F. Martone

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Medical Imaging, Vol. 5, Issue 3, 033504 (September 2018). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.5.3.033504

Abstract

Development of advanced preclinical imaging techniques has had an important impact on the field of biomedical research, with positron emission tomography (PET) imaging the most mature of these efforts. Developers of preclinical PET scanners have joined the recent multimodality imaging trend by combining PET imaging with other modalities, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Our group has developed a combined PET-MRI insert for the imaging of animals up to the size of rats in a clinical 3T MRI scanner. The system utilizes a sequential scanner configuration instead of the more common coplanar geometry. The PET component of the system consists of a ring of 12 liquid-cooled, SiPM-based detector modules (diameter = 15.2 cm). System performance was evaluated with the NEMA NU 4-2008 protocol. Spatial resolution is ∼1.71 mm 5 cm from the center of the field-of-view measured from single-slice rebinned filtered backprojection-reconstructed images. Peak noise equivalent count rate is 17.7 kcps at 8.5 MBq; peak sensitivity is 2.9%. The MRI component of the system is composed of a 12-cm-diameter birdcage transmit/receive coil with a dual-preamplifier interface possessing very low noise preamplifiers. System performance was evaluated using American College of Radiology-based methods. Image homogeneity is 99%; the ghosting ratio is 0.0054. The signal-to-noise ratio is 95 and spatial resolution is ∼0.25 mm. There was no discernable cross-modality interference.

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Raymond R. Raylman, Patrick Ledden, Alexander V. Stolin, Bob Hou, Ganghadar Jaliparthi, and Peter F. Martone "Small animal, positron emission tomography-magnetic resonance imaging system based on a clinical magnetic resonance imaging scanner: evaluation of basic imaging performance," Journal of Medical Imaging 5(3), 033504 (8 September 2018). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.5.3.033504

Received: 14 May 2018; Accepted: 14 August 2018; Published: 8 September 2018

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