Sri Harsha Maramraju1, Bosky Ravindranath1, Sachin Junnarkar2, Dardo Tomasi2, S. David Smith2, Sudeepti Southekal1, Sean Stoll2, Sergio Rescia2, Jean-Francois Pratte2, Martin Purschke2, Xiaole Hong3, David Bennett3, Ken Cheng3, Aiping Jiang3, William Lenz2, Srilalan Krishnamoorthy2, Craig Woody2, Paul Vaska2, David Schlyer2
1Biomedical Engineering, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA; 2Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA; 3Aurora Imaging Technology, North Andover, MA, USA
We have developed MRI compatible PET scanners based on RatCAP for truly simultaneous acquisition of MRI and PET images by integrating PET in 1.5T, 4T and 9.4T MRI facilities, respectively. The main objective is to obtain structural and functional information simultaneously, retaining MRI and PET functionalities. Simultaneous rat brain and striatum phantom MRI/PET images were acquired with RatCAP in 4T and 9.4T MRI facilities, respectively. MR image quality tests were performed in 1.5T MRI, with our prototype breast MRI/PET scanner based on RatCAP. Our initial results demonstrate the feasibility of performing quantitative MRI/PET studies, with minimal interference between both modalities.