TY - JOUR T1 - A Path to Qualification of PET/MRI Scanners for Multicenter Brain Imaging Studies: Evaluation of MRI-Based Attenuation Correction Methods Using a Patient Phantom JF - Journal of Nuclear Medicine JO - J Nucl Med SP - 615 LP - 621 DO - 10.2967/jnumed.120.261881 VL - 63 IS - 4 AU - Ciprian Catana AU - Richard Laforest AU - Hongyu An AU - Fernando Boada AU - Tuoyu Cao AU - David Faul AU - Bjoern Jakoby AU - Floris P. Jansen AU - Bradley J. Kemp AU - Paul E. Kinahan AU - Peder Larson AU - Michael A. Levine AU - Piotr Maniawski AU - Osama Mawlawi AU - Jonathan E. McConathy AU - Alan B. McMillan AU - Julie C. Price AU - Abhejit Rajagopal AU - John Sunderland AU - Patrick Veit-Haibach AU - Kristen A. Wangerin AU - Chunwei Ying AU - Thomas A. Hope Y1 - 2022/04/01 UR - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/63/4/615.abstract N2 - PET/MRI scanners cannot be qualified in the manner adopted for hybrid PET/CT devices. The main hurdle with qualification in PET/MRI is that attenuation correction (AC) cannot be adequately measured in conventional PET phantoms because of the difficulty in converting the MR images of the physical structures (e.g., plastic) into electron density maps. Over the last decade, a plethora of novel MRI-based algorithms has been developed to more accurately derive the attenuation properties of the human head, including the skull. Although promising, none of these techniques has yet emerged as an optimal and universally adopted strategy for AC in PET/MRI. In this work, we propose a path for PET/MRI qualification for multicenter brain imaging studies. Specifically, our solution is to separate the head AC from the other factors that affect PET data quantification and use a patient as a phantom to assess the former. The emission data collected on the integrated PET/MRI scanner to be qualified should be reconstructed using both MRI- and CT-based AC methods, and whole-brain qualitative and quantitative (both voxelwise and regional) analyses should be performed. The MRI-based approach will be considered satisfactory if the PET quantification bias is within the acceptance criteria specified here. We have implemented this approach successfully across 2 PET/MRI scanner manufacturers at 2 sites. ER -