Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42382851›Full record

ArticleFrontiers in artificial intelligence2026

Score-based generative diffusion models to synthesize full-dose FDG brain PET from MRI in epilepsy patients.

Jiaqi Wu, Jiahong Ouyang, Farshad Moradi, Mohammad Mehdi Khalighi, Greg Zaharchuk

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Article in Frontiers in artificial intelligence, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Jiaqi WuRadiology Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
Jiahong OuyangRadiology Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
Farshad MoradiRadiology Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
Mohammad Mehdi KhalighiRadiology Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
Greg ZaharchukRadiology Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET to evaluate patients with epilepsy is one of the most common applications for simultaneous PET/MRI, given the need to image both brain structure and metabolism but is suboptimal due to the radiation dose in this young population. Little work has been done synthesizing diagnostic quality PET images from MRI data or MRI data with ultralow-dose PET using advanced generative AI methods, such as diffusion models, with attention to clinical evaluations tailored for the epilepsy population. We compared the performance of diffusion- and non-diffusion-based deep learning models for the MRI-to-PET image translation task for epilepsy imaging using simultaneous PET/MRI in 52 subjects (40 train/2 validate/10 hold-out test). We tested three different models: 2 score-based generative diffusion models (SGM-Karras Diffusion [SGM-KD] and SGM-variance preserving [SGM-VP]) and a Transformer-U-net. We report results on standard image processing metrics as well as clinically relevant metrics, including congruency measures (Congruence Index and Congruency Mean Absolute Error) that assess hemispheric metabolic asymmetry, which is a key part of the clinical analysis of these images. We compared the model performance using different inputs such as T1-weighted (T1w), T2 FLAIR (T2F), and 1% ultralow-dose PET images to evaluate the effect and necessity of each imaging contrast. The SGM-KD produced the best qualitative and quantitative results when synthesizing PET purely from T1w and T2 FLAIR images with the least mean absolute error in whole-brain specific uptake value ratio (SUVR) and highest intraclass correlation coefficient. When 1% low-dose PET images are included in the inputs, all models improve significantly and are interchangeable for quantitative performance and visual quality. SGMs hold great potential for pure MRI-to-PET translation, while all 3 model types can synthesize full-dose FDG-PET accurately using MRI and ultralow-dose PET. This suggests that deep learning diffusion models could reduce or eliminate radiation dose for patients being evaluated for epilepsy.

Indexed as

artificial intelligenceepilepsyimage translationscore-based generative modeltransformer

Identifiers

PMID42382851
PMCPMC13316877

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.