Quantification of FDG in the spinal cord using PET/MRI.

Background: In this study, we investigate the impact of MR-derived attenuation maps and limited detector resolution on the quantification of positron emission tomography (PET) activity uptake in the spinal cord during PET/MRI. This was performed by simulating [ Results: Simulation results showed a decreasing pattern of uptake from the cervical to the thoracic spinal cord. When bone was not included in attenuation correction, the mean uptake decreased by 3%-10.4%. This difference in measured uptake was 6.4%-23.9% in images simulated at a detector resolution representative of a clinical PET/MRI scanner. At a detector resolution of 4.4 mm, a 32.2% decrease in uptake was measured compared to the 2.1 mm simulation. In patient data, introducing vertebral bone to the attenuation correction pseudo-CT led to a 1.8%-18.3% difference in Conclusion: Ignoring bone during image reconstruction in PET/MRI reduces the activity measured during quantification of the spinal cord; however, the partial volume effect has a greater impact on reducing measured uptake in lower-resolution data. While time-of-flight correction goes somewhat resolves these quantification errors, further research is needed into partial volume correction.