Vision 20/20: Simultaneous CT-MRI — Next chapter of multimodality imaging
- Biomedical Imaging Center/Cluster, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180 (United States)
- Department of Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02114 (United States)
- Department of Radiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637 (United States)
Multimodality imaging systems such as positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) and MRI-PET are widely available, but a simultaneous CT-MRI instrument has not been developed. Synergies between independent modalities, e.g., CT, MRI, and PET/SPECT can be realized with image registration, but such postprocessing suffers from registration errors that can be avoided with synchronized data acquisition. The clinical potential of simultaneous CT-MRI is significant, especially in cardiovascular and oncologic applications where studies of the vulnerable plaque, response to cancer therapy, and kinetic and dynamic mechanisms of targeted agents are limited by current imaging technologies. The rationale, feasibility, and realization of simultaneous CT-MRI are described in this perspective paper. The enabling technologies include interior tomography, unique gantry designs, open magnet and RF sequences, and source and detector adaptation. Based on the experience with PET-CT, PET-MRI, and MRI-LINAC instrumentation where hardware innovation and performance optimization were instrumental to construct commercial systems, the authors provide top-level concepts for simultaneous CT-MRI to meet clinical requirements and new challenges. Simultaneous CT-MRI fills a major gap of modality coupling and represents a key step toward the so-called “omnitomography” defined as the integration of all relevant imaging modalities for systems biology and precision medicine.
- OSTI ID:
- 22482349
- Journal Information:
- Medical Physics, Vol. 42, Issue 10; Other Information: (c) 2015 Author(s); Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-2405
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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