Development and Validation of a combined PET/MRI Scanner for Biomedical Research

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Multimodality imaging is an emerging field in both, biomedical research and clinical diagnosis. While PET/CT is already established, this grant proposal focuses on the next generation of imaging modalities: combined positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MRI). The potential of PET/MRI is not limited to revealing sequentially morphological MR and functional PET information as in PET/CT but allows simultaneous and multi-functional data acquisition, including MR spectroscopy and functional MRI. We have developed a prototype small animal PET/MRI and showed that the PET scanner can be built in a way to minimize mutual inference between the two imaging systems. First animal studies showed the potential of this new multimodality imaging device. Within this proposal, we want to go a step further and develop a MRI compatible small animal PET scanner, which goes inside a 7T magnet, with a performance comparable to commercial state-of-the-art animal PET systems, having a large diameter and large axial field of view to allow whole body mouse and rat imaging. Dedicated MR imaging sequences will be explored and adapted to allow MR perfusion measurements and spectroscopy with the PET insert installed in the 7T scanner. Furthermore special emphasis is taken that the performance of both imaging systems is fully maintained. The proposal include also extensive animal studies in the field of oncology to develop and establish novel synchronous PET/MR imaging protocols and to fully explore the potential of combined PET/MR in the realm of oncology research.