Multimodal phantoms for clinical PET/MRI.

Area of Science:

• Medical Physics
• Radiological Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Phantoms are essential tools in medical imaging for validation and quality assurance across various modalities.
• Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) phantoms serve distinct roles in nuclear medicine and MRI research.
• The advent of simultaneous PET/MRI scanners necessitates specialized phantom development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review phantom designs and applications in simultaneous acquisition PET/MRI over the past decade.
• To identify common themes in phantom materials, design, and manufacturing for PET/MRI.
• To discuss current challenges and future directions in multimodal phantom development for PET/MRI.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature review of phantom research in simultaneous PET/MRI.
• Analysis of common phantom materials, design strategies, and manufacturing techniques.
• Identification of solutions provided by phantoms for PET/MRI research challenges.

Main Results:

• No commercially optimized phantoms exist for simultaneous PET/MRI acquisition.
• Researchers often adapt existing PET/MRI phantoms or develop custom, in-house solutions.
• Challenges include MR-based attenuation correction and the need for MR-visible materials.

Conclusions:

• Custom-designed phantoms are frequently employed to address limitations in simultaneous PET/MRI research.
• Further characterization of materials and manufacturing is needed for reproducible phantom development.
• Standardized, optimized phantoms are required to advance simultaneous PET/MRI applications.