Simultaneous Whole-Body PET/MRI with Continuous Table Motion

Harald Braun¹, Susanne Ziegler¹, Daniel H. Paulus¹, Jens U. Krause¹, Harald H. Quick¹

Simultaneous whole-body PET/MR hybrid imaging has become clinical reality. Usually in MRI and PET data is acquired in a multi-station approach, where the patient table is held at a constant position. This bears some inherent shortcomings: varying sensitivity (PET), distortion in z-direction (MRI), combination artifacts between individual bed positions, etc.. To overcome these shortcomings, we introduce a data acquisition and post-processing approach with continuous table motion (CTM). CTM PET/MR data acquisition was evaluated with a custom-built large field-of-view phantom and on a clinical patient. This approach for the first time enables simultaneous whole-body PET/MR hybrid imaging during continuous table movement.