Clinical research of PET-MRI

Multimodality imaging with PET-CTand SPECT-CT has become commonplace in clinical practice and in preclinical and basic biomedical research.Although PET-CT is already an established clinical tool it still bears some limitations.To overcome these limitations, recent research concentrates on the combination of PET and MRI into one single machine.Combined PET-MRI allows for multi-parametric imaging and reveals one or more functional processes simultaneously along with high-resolution morphology.Especially in small-animal research, where high soft tissue contrast is required, and the scan time as well as radiation dose are critical factors, the combination of PET and MRI would be beneficial compared with PET-CT. Key words: Positron emission tomography;  Magnetic resonance imaging;  Tomography, X-ray computed;  Image processing, computer-assisted