Fast and Accurate Rat Head Motion Tracking With Point Sources for Awake Brain PET

To avoid the confounding effects of anesthesia and immobilization stress in rat brain positron emission tomography (PET), motion tracking-based unrestrained awake rat brain imaging is being developed. In this paper, we propose a fast and accurate rat headmotion tracking method based on small PET point sources. PET point sources (3-4) attached to the rat's head are tracked in image space using 15-32-ms time frames. Our point source tracking (PST) method was validated using a manually moved microDerenzo phantom that was simultaneously tracked with an optical tracker (OT) for comparison. The PST method was further validated in three awake [¹⁸F]FDG rat brain scans. Compared with the OT, the PST-based correction at the same frame rate (31.2 Hz) reduced the reconstructed FWHM by 0.39-0.66 mm for the different tested rod sizes of the microDerenzo phantom. The FWHM could be further reduced by another 0.07-0.13 mm when increasing the PST frame rate (66.7 Hz). Regional brain [¹⁸F]FDG uptake in the motion corrected scan was strongly correlated ( ) with that of the anesthetized reference scan for all three cases ( ). The proposed PST method allowed excellent and reproducible motion correction in awake in vivo experiments. In addition, there is no need of specialized tracking equipment or additional calibrations to be performed, the point sources are practically imperceptible to the rat, and PST is ideally suitable for small bore scanners, where optical tracking might be challenging.