Whole-Body PET/MR scanner

Project Summary This proposal seeks support for a dedicated research PET/MR system for the Yale School of Medicine, featuring a TOF PET instrument integrated with a high-resolution MR system. This system is the first of its kind in the State of Connecticut and will enhance multiple research projects and training grants. Benefits include improved protocol workflow, multinuclear spectroscopic imaging, MRI-enhanced PET images (motion and partial volume correction), increased lesion detection sensitivity, and radiation dose reduction. Advances in MR and PET imaging have spurred significant research in modeling, image reconstruction, and clinical applications, enabling extraction of crucial physiological information. Together the two modalities are even more powerful. MRI can offer additional functional and anatomical information beyond PET, such as diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), perfusion-weighted imaging (PWI), functional MRI (fMRI), and magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging (MRSI). Integrating these modalities with PET can provide a more comprehensive understanding of biological processes under investigation. The simultaneous acquisition enables better spatial and temporal alignment between the modalities and improves image fusion accuracy and reduces motion artifacts, which is particularly useful in dynamic imaging studies or applications requiring precise localization, as is true of many of the projects at Yale. Combining the two modalities also reduces the number of scans needed for a subject, increasing their comfort and decreasing overall costs and scheduling complications. The essential administrative and technical leadership is already in place at Yale to ensure efficient utilization of this instrumentation. The Yale School of Medicine has agreed to provide funding to cover the balance of the cost of the scanner along with renovation costs and seed funding for pilot studies. The proposed PET/MR system with its unique capabilities will be a major asset to a community of NIH-funded investigators and likely lead to major innovations in PET/MR imaging research.