MR Pulse Sequences for PET/MRI

PET/MRI systems have unique requirements for the MRI scan components, which consist of various MR pulse sequences. These unique requirements include performing whole-body scanning, estimating the photon attenuation for accurate PET reconstructions, diffusion-weighted imaging as an important contrast in many tumor types, and lung imaging for pulmonary nodule screening. Attenuation estimation, whole-body diffusion imaging, and lung imaging are particularly challenging for MRI, but recent technological advances are demonstrating great success for these requirements. This chapter describes the MR pulse sequence concepts and considerations for each of these PET/MRI requirements as well as summarizes the state-of-the-art techniques being used today.