The Clinical Role of Fusion Imaging Using PET, CT, and MR Imaging
Section snippets
Software-based image registration and fusion
Software image fusion can be challenging to perform on a routine basis in the clinical setting because it requires exceptional digital communication in medicine (DICOM) connectivity, compatibility between the scanning protocols used by various imaging modalities, and outstanding collaboration between various clinical departments. These challenges may be overcome by the use of combined PET/CT systems described in the following section, although software-based coregistration offers greater
Combined PET/CT Instrumentation
The historical development of multimodality imaging is marked by various significant technical and scientific accomplishments driven by an unprecedented collaboration between multidisciplinary groups of investigators. Even though the introduction of commercial PET/CT units in a clinical setting is a recent feature, the prospective benefits of correlative multimodality imaging have been well established since the early years of medical imaging. Many pioneering radiologic scientists and
Clinical role of correlative fusion imaging
The clinical role of correlative imaging encompasses a wide variety of applications. It is now performed routinely with commercially available radiopharmaceuticals to answer important clinical questions in oncology,72 cardiology,73 neurology, and psychiatry.74, 75 As discussed previously, much of the early image registration effort was restricted to intrasubject brain applications, where the confinement of compact brain tissues within the skull renders a rigid-body model a satisfactory
Advances in anatomically guided quantification of PET data
The primary motivation for multimodality imaging has been image fusion of functional and anatomic data to facilitate anatomic localization of functional abnormalities and to assist region-of-interest (ROI) definition for quantitative analysis. The anatomic information also can be useful for many other tasks, including attenuation compensation, transmission-based scatter modeling, motion detection, and correction, introducing a priori anatomic information into reconstruction of the PET emission
Summary and future prospects
This article has attempted to summarize important themes of ongoing advancements by providing an overview of current state-of-the art developments in software- and hardware-based multimodality imaging combining PET with other structural imaging modalities (PET/CT and PET/MR imaging). Clearly, multimodality imaging has changed drastically over the last 2 decades. The pace of change has accelerated rapidly in the last decade driven by the introduction and widespread acceptance of combined PET/CT
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr C. Steiner for providing some of the clinical illustrations used in this manuscript.
References (134)
Combating cancer in the third millennium: the contribution of medical physics
Phys Med
(2008)- et al.
Whole-body PET/CT imaging: combining software- and hardware-based co-registration
Z Med Phys
(2008) - et al.
Respiratory motion in positron emission tomography/computed tomography: a review
Semin Nucl Med
(2008) - et al.
Software for image registration: algorithms, accuracy, efficacy
Semin Nucl Med
(2003) - et al.
Dual-modality imaging of function and physiology
Acad Radiol
(2002) - et al.
Simultaneous acquisition of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) data and positron emission tomography (PET) images with a prototype MR-compatible, small animal PET imager
J Magn Reson
(2007) Properties of avalanche photodiodes for applications in high energy physics, astrophysics and medical imaging
Nucl Instr Meth A
(2002)Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes, history, properties and problems
Nucl Instr Meth A
(2006)- et al.
Preliminary studies of a simultaneous PET/MRI scanner based on the RatCAP small animal tomograph
Nucl Instr Meth A
(2007) - et al.
Avalanche multiplication in amorphous selenium and its utilization in imaging
Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids
(2008)
Nuclear medicine in neurology and psychiatry
Lancet
Registration, segmentation, and visualization of multimodal brain images
Comput Med Imaging Graph
An overlap invariant entropy measure of 3D medical image alignment
Pattern Recognit
Effects of radiotherapy planning with a dedicated combined PET-CT-simulator of patients with non-small cell lung cancer on dose limiting normal tissues and radiation dose-escalation: a planning study
Radiother Oncol
18F-deoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) for the planning of radiotherapy in lung cancer: high impact in patients with atelectasis
Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys
The role of positron emission tomography in evaluating mediastinal lymph node metastases in non-small-cell lung cancer
Clin Lung Cancer
Novel quantitative techniques for assessing regional and global function and structure based on modern imaging modalities: implications for normal variation, aging and diseased states
Semin Nucl Med
X-ray–based attenuation correction for positron emission tomography/computed tomography scanners
Semin Nucl Med
Advances in attenuation correction techniques in PET
PET Clinics
Dual-modality imaging: more than the sum of its components
Does PET/CT render software fusion obsolete?
Nuklearmedizin
Automated 3-dimensional registration of stand-alone (18)F-FDG whole-body PET with CT
J Nucl Med
Medical image registration
Phys Med Biol
Medical image registration using mutual information
Proceedings of the IEEE
Software approach to merging molecular with anatomic information
J Nucl Med
Voxel similarity measures for automated image registration
Multimodality image registration by maximization of mutual information
IEEE Trans Med Imaging
Non-rigid image registration using a median-filtered coarse-to-fine displacement field and a symmetric correlation ratio
Phys Med Biol
Positron-emission tomography and assessment of cancer therapy
N Engl J Med
Monitoring cancer treatment with PET/CT: does it make a difference?
J Nucl Med
Description of a simultaneous emission-transmission CT system
Proc Soc Photo Instrum Eng
Bruce H. Hasegawa, PhD, 1951–2008
J Nucl Med
A combined PET/CT scanner for clinical oncology
J Nucl Med
Multimodality imaging of structure and function
Phys Med Biol
Development of a cost-effective modular SPECT/CT scanner
Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging
Multi-modality imaging on track
Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging
Initial clinical experience using a new integrated in-line PET/CT system
Br J Radiol
An analysis of correction methods for emission contamination in PET postinjection transmission measurement
IEEE Trans Nucl Sci
Concurrent PET/CT with an integrated imaging system: intersociety dialogue from the joint working group of the American College of Radiology, the Society of Nuclear Medicine, and the Society of Computed Body Tomography and Magnetic Resonance
J Nucl Med
White paper of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) and the European Society of Radiology (ESR) on multimodality imaging
Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging
EANM-ESR white paper on multimodality imaging
Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging
To enhance or not to enhance? 18F-FDG and CT contrast agents in dual-modality 18F-FDG PET/CT
J Nucl Med
Quantifying the effect of IV contrast media on integrated PET/CT: clinical evaluation
AJR Am J Roentgenol
Correction of oral contrast artifacts in CT-based attenuation correction of PET images using an automated segmentation algorithm
Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging
On lifting the inherent limitations of positron emission tomography by using magnetic fields (MagPET)
Automedica
Use of a magnetic field to increase the spatial resolution of positron emission tomography
Med Phys
Muller-Gartner H-W 4.5 Tesla magnetic field reduces range of high-energy positrons: potential implications for positron emission tomography
IEEE Trans Nucl Sci
Cited by (0)
This article originally appeared in PET Clinics 2008;3(3);275–91.
This work was supported by grant SNSF 3100A0-116547 from the Swiss National Foundation.