Rigid Motion Correction for Brain PET/MR Imaging using Optical Tracking

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Neuroscience
• Biophysics

Background:

• High-resolution positron emission tomography (PET) brain imaging on PET/MR scanners faces significant challenges due to patient head motion.
• Clinical populations, such as Alzheimer's disease patients, often struggle with prolonged stillness, exacerbating motion artifacts.
• Head motion not only degrades PET data but also impacts the quality of simultaneously acquired MR data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To implement and evaluate an optical motion tracking technique for correcting patient head motion during PET/MR brain imaging.
• To assess the efficacy of this motion correction method on real-world clinical data from Alzheimer's disease patients.

Main Methods:

• An established optical motion tracking system, previously validated for MR motion correction, was integrated with a list-mode PET reconstruction algorithm.
• The system corrects motion for each individual PET event recorded during the scan.
• The technique was applied to PET/MR data acquired from Alzheimer's disease patients using a GE SIGNA PET/MR scanner.

Main Results:

• The optical motion tracking and list-mode PET reconstruction successfully corrected for patient head motion.
• This resulted in motion-corrected PET reconstructions, enhancing image quality and data reliability.
• The method proved effective on clinical Alzheimer's disease patient data.

Conclusions:

• Optical motion tracking combined with list-mode PET reconstruction is a viable solution for mitigating head motion artifacts in PET/MR imaging.
• This approach offers significant potential for improving the diagnostic accuracy and research utility of PET/MR scans in challenging patient populations.
• The demonstrated technique is directly applicable to clinical settings using the GE SIGNA PET/MR scanner.