MR Compatible Brain PET Scanner Delivers Significantly Superior Spatial Resolution and Sensitivity

Positron Emission Tomography/Magnetic Resonance Imaging (PET/MRI) is a powerful tool for imaging the brain, but there's still a need to improve the current level of spatial resolution offered by PET scanners in this area. To address this, researchers have created a brain PET scanner compatible with MRI that features dual-ended readout depth encoding detectors. This new design results in both uniformly high spatial resolution and high sensitivity.

This MRI-compatible brain PET scanner, known as the SIAT bPET, has been developed by researchers from Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing, China). The data revealed that the SIAT bPET achieved an average spatial resolution of 1.2 millimeters throughout its entire field of view. When focused at the center of this field, the scanner showed a sensitivity rate of 11.0% within an energy window ranging from 350 to 750 keV. Interestingly, running MRI sequences had minimal effect on the PET scanner's performance. Even when the PET scanner was inserted into the MRI scanner and switched on, the decrease in signal-to-noise ratio and the consistency of MRI images was less than 2%.

Image: Images of a human brain injected with 18F-FDG obtained with SIAT bPET (Photo courtesy of SIAT)

"SIAT bPET is the sole MR-compatible dedicated brain PET scanner developed in China so far, boasting spatial resolution and sensitivity significantly superior to all previously developed MR-compatible brain PET scanners," said Prof. YANG Yongfeng from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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