Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 12, 2026
Multimodal Cross-Device and Marker-Free Co-Registration of Preclinical Imaging Modalities
Published on: October 27, 2023
A Novel Marker-Based Registration Method for Simultaneous Preclinical PET/MR with a Non-Stationary PET Detector
Leo Marecki1,2,3, Suyog Pol2,3, Pawel Markiewicz4,5,6
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA.
Purpose:
To develop a novel, fully automated marker-based method for registering PET images from a small, non-stationary, retrofitted preclinical PET detector to simultaneously acquired MRI images.
Methods:
We manufactured a nose cone tract with geometric markers from a material visible when imaged with a zero-echo-time MRI sequence. A one-time universal calibration determined the relation between the PET image space and the nose cone tract markers. An experiment-specific calibration was needed to determine the location of the nose cone tract markers in laboratory space, and, hence, in MRI image space. The robustness of the method was evaluated through systematic experiments.
Results:
Experiments demonstrated successful registration of the two imaging modalities with a spatial registration error below the PET voxel size.
Conclusion:
The proposed registration approach is a practical method for registering simultaneously acquired PET and MR images with sub-voxel precision when the PET device is non-stationary and the usable space inside the detector is too small for dual-modality fiducial markers.
