TITLE:
Integrated Assessment of Cardiac PET/MRI: Co-Registered PET and MRI Polar Plots by Mutual MR-Based Segmentation of the Left Ventricular Myocardium
AUTHORS:
Felix Nensa, Thorsten D. Poeppel, Ercan Tezgah, Philipp Heusch, Kai Nassenstein, Michael Forsting, Andreas Bockisch, Raimund Erbel, Thomas Schlosser
KEYWORDS:
Cardiac PET/MRI, Bull’s Eye, Polar Plot, Polar Map
JOURNAL NAME:
World Journal of Cardiovascular Diseases,
Vol.7 No.4,
April
11,
2017
ABSTRACT: Background: In the present study, we sought to describe a procedure for the creation of co-registered positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) polar plots of cardiac PET/MRI examinations, validate the resulting plots against available standard methods in patients with myocardial infarction and provide examples that demonstrate the advantage of the novel approach over existing standards. Methods: Co-registered LGE and PET short-axis images were transformed into polar maps based on a radial sampling pattern. LGE was automatically detected using an automated thresholding algorithm (ATA). In 20 PET/MRI examinations in patients with acute myocardial infarction, agreement between manual LGE assessment and the ATA classification was calculated. Also agreement between MRI-segmentation based PET polar plots and standard PET polar plots (created with the Corridor4DM software package) was assessed. Results: No statistically significant difference in infarct sizes between manual and ATA segmentation was found (p = 0.12). Both methods were highly correlated (Pearson’s r = 0.96, p Conclusion: A straightforward software approach for the creation of co-registered PET and MRI polar plots was described and successfully demonstrated in PET/MRI studies of myocardial infarction and inflammation.