Evaluation of a Dedicated Radiofrequency Carotid PET/MRI Coil

Carotid radiofrequency coils inside a PET/MRI system can result in PET quantification errors. We compared the performance of a dedicated PET/MRI carotid coil against a coil for MRI-only use. An F-18-fluorodeoxyglucose (F-18-FDG) phantom was scanned without and with an MRI-only coil and with the PET/MRI coil. The decay-corrected normalized activity was compared for the different coil configurations. Eighteen patients were scanned with the three coil configurations. The maximal standardized uptake values (SUVmax) and signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) were calculated. Repeated measures ANOVA was performed to assess the differences in SUVmax and SNR between the coil configurations. In the phantom study, the PET/MRI coil demonstrated a slight decrease (<5%), while the MRI-only coil showed a substantial decrease (up to 10%) in normalized activity at the position of coil elements compared to no dedicated coil configuration. In the patient study, the SUVmax values for both no surface coil (3.59 +/- 0.15) and PET/MRI coil (3.54 +/- 0.15) were significantly higher (p = 0.03 and p = 0.04, respectively) as compared to the MRI-only coil (3.28 +/- 0.16). No significant difference was observed between PET/MRI and no surface coil (p = 1.0). The SNR values for both PET/MRI (7.31 +/- 0.44) and MRI-only (7.62 +/- 0.42) configurations demonstrated significantly higher (p < 0.001) SNR values as compared to the no surface coil (3.78 +/- 0.22), while no significant difference was observed in SNR between the PET/MRI and MRI-only coil (p = 1.0). This study demonstrated that the PET/MRI coil can be used for PET imaging without requiring attenuation correction while acquiring high-resolution MR images.