The present study assesses the value and reproducibility of a novel CAIPIRINHA-accelerated T1-weighted Dixon-based prototype for whole-body PET/MRI in comparison to the clinical standard. This prototype allows the aquisition of an MR-based attenuation correction and a high-resolution T1w DIXON stack that may be used for diagnostic correlation of PET findings in one single step. Voxel-wise intra-individual differences, intermethod-agreement using regression and bland-altman plot analysis, inter-reader agreement for image quality and a repeated measurement experiment in a healthy volunteer without tracer injection were peformed. The novel prototype demonstrated a high reproducibility of standardized uptake value quantification compared to the standard and excellent image quality for all body regions. Smaller breathing artifacts in the lungs may transfer on the PET µmap and thus influence the attenuation correction. Therefore, physicians and the technicians need to assess the µmap to veriy artifact-free acquisition. The novel protoype is useful for clinical PET/MRI studies towards time-efficient protocols as a separate T1w-sequence may be omitted.
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