A Joint Estimation Method for Kinetic Modeling of Simultaneously Acquired PET/MRI Signals
Moses Q. Wilks, Xiaomeng Zhang, Jinsong Ouyang, Georges El Fakhri, Nathaniel M. Alpert, Quanzheng Li.
At the IEEE Medical Imaging Conference, Dr. Wilks presented a method to jointly estimate kinetic parameters from simultaneously acquired PET and MRI data, using the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM). Often, data acquired on the relatively new modality of PET/MRI scanners is used independently. This method was developed to use this simultaneously acquired data in a synergistic fashion. Computer simulations showed that it could improve model fitting in the case of CTE-MRI and 15O-H2O PET data. This was extended to in vivo imaging of a rabbit implanted with a tumor, and simultaneously imaged with Magnevist as a MRI contrast agent and 15O-H2O. A 4x4x5cm region of interest was created over the tumor and vascular extraction (K1) rates were measured using standard techniques (PET Alone), or by simultaneous modeling (ADMM). Due to the noisy nature of the 15O-H2O scan, PET alone was not sufficient to create reasonable measurements, but using ADMM structural and biological information was retrieved.
