Abstract #0260

MR-Based Attenuation Correction for PET/MR

Matthias Hofmann^1,2, Florian Steinke¹, Ilja Bezrukov^1,2, Armin Kolb², Philip Aschoff², Matthias Lichy², Michael Erb², Thomas Ngele², Michael Brady³, Bernhard Schlkopf¹, Bernd Pichler²

¹Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany; ²Department of Radiology, University of Tuebingen, Tuebingen, Germany; ³Wolfson Medical Vision Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

There has recently been a growing interest in combining PET and MR. Attenuation correction (AC), which accounts for radiation attenuation properties of the tissue, is mandatory for quantitative PET. In the case of PET/MR the attenuation map needs to be determined from the MR image. This is intrinsically difficult as MR intensities are not related to the electron density information of the attenuation map. Using ultra-short echo (UTE) acquisition, atlas registration and machine learning, we present methods that allow prediction of the attenuation map based on the MR image both for brain and whole body imaging.