Neurologic Applications of PET/MR Imaging

Abstract

PET/MR imaging benefits neurologic clinical care and research by providing spatially and temporally matched anatomic MR imaging, advanced MR physiologic imaging, and metabolic PET imaging. MR imaging sequences and PET tracers can be modified to target physiology specific to a neurologic disease process, with applications in neurooncology, epilepsy, dementia, cerebrovascular disease, and psychiatric and neurologic research. Simultaneous PET/MR imaging provides efficient acquisition of multiple temporally matched datasets, and opportunities for motion correction and improved anatomic assignment of PET data. Current challenges include optimizing MR imaging-based attenuation correction and necessity for dual expertise in PET and MR imaging.

Keywords: Dementia; Epilepsy; MR diffusion-weighted imaging; MR perfusion-weighted imaging; Neurooncology; PET/MR.