Evaluation of synergistic image registration for motion-corrected coronary NaF-PET-MR

Abstract

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is caused by the formation of plaques in the coronary arteries and is one of the most common cardiovascular diseases. NaF-PET can be used to assess plaque composition, which could be important for therapy planning. One of the main challenges of NaF-PET is cardiac and respiratory motion which can strongly impair diagnostic accuracy. In this study, we investigated the use of a synergistic image registration approach which combined motion-resolved MR and PET data to estimate cardiac and respiratory motion. This motion estimation could then be used to improve the NaF-PET image quality. The approach was evaluated with numerical simulations and in vivo scans of patients suffering from CAD. In numerical simulations, it was shown, that combining MR and PET information can improve the accuracy of motion estimation by more than 15%. For the in vivo scans, the synergistic image registration led to an improvement in uptake visualization. This is the first study to assess the benefit of combining MR and NaF-PET for cardiac and respiratory motion estimation. Further patient evaluation is required to fully evaluate the potential of this approach. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Synergistic tomographic image reconstruction: part 1’.

Respiratory and cardiac motion correction in positron emission tomography using elastic motion approach for simultaneous abdomen and thorax positron emission tomography-magnetic resonance imaging

“…Finally, this work opens the door for future research, for example by using the motion blurring information from PET as a quality assurance for motion compensation in MR. This concept appears possible considering that a recent study combined both, the motion information from both modalities which improved final motion model accuracy by 15% ( 40 ).…”

Synergistic motion compensation strategies for positron emission tomography when acquired simultaneously with magnetic resonance imaging

“…Another challenging area to apply motion correction is in the coronary arteries as in the paradigm illustrated via a computational simulation study by Petibon et al [83]. The advantages of the synergistic use of PET-MRI for respiratory and cardiac motion correction have been visible in recent clinical studies where it was shown that the visualization of uptake in coronary plaques can be improved [39].…”

“…Finally, a synergistic approach has recently been implemented by Mayer et al where they used mutual information from PET and MRI to both derive the motion vectors and correct for motion [ 39 ].…”

“…Another challenging area to apply motion correction is in the coronary arteries as in the paradigm illustrated via a computational simulation study by Petibon et al [ 83 ]. The advantages of the synergistic use of PET-MRI for respiratory and cardiac motion correction have been visible in recent clinical studies where it was shown that the visualization of uptake in coronary plaques can be improved [ 39 ].

Figure 5 Identifying regions affected by motion: blurring and signal loss within the myocardium when non-motion corrected (non-MC) non-gated compared to motion corrected (MC) PET images as in the antero-lateral wall (solid line).

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Synergistic tomographic image reconstruction: part 1

“…Mayer et al show that using images from both modalities for motion estimation through synergistic PET-MRI image registration allows for more accurate cardiac and respiratory motion estimation. This can improve the quality of [ 18 F]NaF PET images of coronary plaques [ 9 ].…”