Evaluation of Conventional MR Surface Coil Impact on PET Quantification

Hua-Lei Zhang¹, Sebastian Frst¹, Axel Martinez-Mller¹, Isabel Dregely¹, Alexandra Bartel¹, Markus Schwaiger¹, Stephan Nekolla¹

Multi-channel receiver coils are mandatory to obtain high-quality MR images. This study aims to evaluate regional effects from state-of-the-art MR coils not optimized for hybrid imaging on PET and to address whether rather demanding adjustments for usage in MR/PET are needed. Adding a 32-element coil set introduced PET activity underestimation but maintained the signal homogeneity in MR/PET, while severe inhomogeneity and preserved overall activity counts was found in CT-based attenuation corrected PET images. The findings provide insights on how to make compromises to obtain high-quality MR images without degrading PET activity concentration when using coils not specifically optimized for MR/PET.