PET plays an important role in both brain diseases diagnosis and non-human primate neurology studies. However, one major hurdle of brain PET is motion artifact from head motion, which is particularly true for elderly and pediatric patients, as well as animal studies. Previous researches have proposed head restraints, optical tracking with video camera or infrared systems and MR k-space navigator in reducing motion artifacts, yet none of these techniques can satisfactorily address the issue. In the proposal, we aim to develop MR micro-coils along with dedicated motion tracking MR pulse sequence to track head motion in real time during a brain PET-MR acquisition and incorporate the measured motion in the PET reconstruction. The proposed motion correction technique will be utilized in our currently funded project R01MH100350 in which we are using PET and kinetic modeling to investigate the neurochemistry of major depressive disorder. Two different setup of motion tracking microcoils will also be tested and compared.
Brain PET is widely used for the diagnosis and monitor of brain diseases, and brain research; however challenges exist in artifacts rising from head motion during the acquisition. This proposal is to develop a hardware and associated software for head motion tracking and a micro-coil based motion corrected PET reconstruction with point-spread-function modeling in PET-MR. Subsequent human studies will also be conducted to validate the feasibility of the approach and optimize the acquisition protocol.
| Huang, C; Ouyang, J; Reese, T G et al. (2015) Continuous MR bone density measurement using water- and fat-suppressed projection imaging (WASPI) for PET attenuation correction in PET-MR. Phys Med Biol 60:N369-81 |
