Reproducibility of MRI-DUTE-Based Attenuation Correction Maps in Brain Tumor Patients

Grace Sooyeon Kim¹, Daniel Burje Chonde¹, Thomas Benner¹, Michael Hamm², Alma Gregory Sorensen¹, Ciprian Catana¹

Bone/air segmentation is a significant challenge in developing the MRI-based attenuation correction (AC) method. We determined good reproducibility of a dual-echo ultra-short echo time (DUTE) sequence-based AC method used in ten brain tumor patients over four time points (relative SD between 2.17 to 13.40%). We found that the DUTE-based method yielded a 85.30% average agreement with respect to the silver-standard segmented CT-based map. The greatest challenges with this method involve segmentation of the full thickness of the skull and distinguishing air from tissue in difficult sinus regions. Further development of the DUTE-based AC method is under way.