Attenuation correction for PET/MRI to measure tracer activity surrounding total knee arthroplasty

Positron emission tomography (PET) in combination with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could allow inflammatory complications near total knee arthroplasty (TKA) to be studied early in their development. However, attenuation of the PET signal by the metal TKA implants imparts substantial error into measurements of tracer activity, and conventional MR-based attenuation correction (AC) methods have large signal voids in the vicinity of metal implants.

To evaluate a segmentation-based AC approach to measure tracer uptake from PET/MRI scans near TKA implants.

A TKA implant (Triathlon, Stryker, Mahwah, USA) was implanted into a cadaver. Four vials were filled with [¹⁸F]fluorodeoxyglucose with known activity concentration (4.68 MBq total, 0.76 MBq/mL) and inserted into the knee. Images of the knee were acquired using a 3T PET/MRI system (Biograph mMR, Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany). Models of the implant components were registered to the MR data using rigid-body transformations and the other tissue classes were manually segmented. These segments were used to create the segmentation-based map and complete the AC. Percentage error of the resulting measured activities was calculated by comparing the measured and known amounts of activity in each vial.

The original AC resulted in a percentage error of 64.1% from the known total activity. Errors in the individual vial activities ranged from 40.2 to 82.7%. Using the new segmentation-based AC, the percentage error of the total activity decreased to 3.55%. Errors in the individual vials were less than 15%.

The segmentation-based AC technique dramatically reduced the error in activity measurements that result from PET signal attenuation by the metal TKA implant. This approach may be useful to enhance the reliability of PET/MRI measurements for numerous applications.