Ultrafast Ultrasound Imaging for Super-Resolution Preclinical Cardiac PET

Overview

Journal Mol Imaging Biol

Publisher Springer

Specialties Molecular Biology
Radiology

Date 2020 Jul 1

PMID 32602084

Citations 1

Authors

Mailyn Perez-Liva

Thulaciga Yoganathan

Joaquin L Herraiz

Jonathan Poree

Mickael Tanter

Daniel Balvay

Thomas Viel

Anikitos Garofalakis

Jean Provost

Bertrand Tavitian

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Purpose: Physiological motion and partial volume effect (PVE) significantly degrade the quality of cardiac positron emission tomography (PET) images in the fast-beating hearts of rodents. Several Super-resolution (SR) techniques using a priori anatomical information have been proposed to correct motion and PVE in PET images. Ultrasound is ideally suited to capture real-time high-resolution cine images of rodent hearts. Here, we evaluated an ultrasound-based SR method using simultaneously acquired and co-registered PET-CT-Ultrafast Ultrasound Imaging (UUI) of the beating heart in closed-chest rodents.

Procedures: The method was tested with numerical and animal data (n = 2) acquired with the non-invasive hybrid imaging system PETRUS that acquires simultaneously PET, CT, and UUI.

Results: We showed that ultrasound-based SR drastically enhances the quality of PET images of the beating rodent heart. For the simulations, the deviations between expected and mean reconstructed values were 2 % after applying SR. For the experimental data, when using Ultrasound-based SR correction, contrast was improved by a factor of two, signal-to-noise ratio by 11 %, and spatial resolution by 56 % (~ 0.88 mm) with respect to static PET. As a consequence, the metabolic defect following an acute cardiac ischemia was delineated with much higher anatomical precision.

Conclusions: Our results provided a proof-of-concept that image quality of cardiac PET in fast-beating rodent hearts can be significantly improved by ultrasound-based SR, a portable low-cost technique. Improved PET imaging of the rodent heart may allow new explorations of physiological and pathological situations related with cardiac metabolism.

Citing Articles

Acute stress induces long-term metabolic, functional, and structural remodeling of the heart.

Yoganathan T, Perez-Liva M, Balvay D, Le Gall M, Lallemand A, Certain A Nat Commun. 2023; 14(1):3835.

PMID: 37380648 PMC: 10307856. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-39590-3.

References

Jeppesen J, Kiens B . Regulation and limitations to fatty acid oxidation during exercise. J Physiol. 2012; 590(5):1059-68. PMC: 3381814. DOI: 10.1113/jphysiol.2011.225011. View

Haas F, Jennen L, Heinzmann U, Augustin N, Wottke M, Schwaiger M . Ischemically compromised myocardium displays different time-courses of functional recovery: correlation with morphological alterations?. Eur J Cardiothorac Surg. 2001; 20(2):290-8. DOI: 10.1016/s1010-7940(01)00781-3. View

Vesely M, Dilsizian V . Nuclear cardiac stress testing in the era of molecular medicine. J Nucl Med. 2008; 49(3):399-413. DOI: 10.2967/jnumed.107.033530. View

Hernandez-Esquivel L, Marin-Hernandez A, Pavon N, Carvajal K, Moreno-Sanchez R . Cardiotoxicity of copper-based antineoplastic drugs casiopeinas is related to inhibition of energy metabolism. Toxicol Appl Pharmacol. 2005; 212(1):79-88. DOI: 10.1016/j.taap.2005.06.023. View

Luo J, Konofagou E . Imaging of wall motion coupled with blood flow velocity in the heart and vessels in vivo: a feasibility study. Ultrasound Med Biol. 2011; 37(6):980-95. PMC: 4009734. DOI: 10.1016/j.ultrasmedbio.2011.03.004. View

Perez-Liva M, Viel T, Yoganathan T, Garofalakis A, Sourdon J, Facchin C . Performance evaluation of the PET component of a hybrid PET/CT-ultrafast ultrasound imaging instrument. Phys Med Biol. 2018; 63(19):19NT01. DOI: 10.1088/1361-6560/aad946. View

Visser E, Disselhorst J, Brom M, Laverman P, Gotthardt M, Oyen W . Spatial resolution and sensitivity of the Inveon small-animal PET scanner. J Nucl Med. 2009; 50(1):139-47. DOI: 10.2967/jnumed.108.055152. View

Segars W, Tsui B, Frey E, Johnson G, Berr S . Development of a 4-D digital mouse phantom for molecular imaging research. Mol Imaging Biol. 2004; 6(3):149-59. DOI: 10.1016/j.mibio.2004.03.002. View

Lang N, Dawood M, Buther F, Schober O, Schafers M, Schafers K . Organ movement reduction in PET/CT using dual-gated list-mode acquisition. Z Med Phys. 2006; 16(1):93-100. DOI: 10.1078/0939-3889-00296. View

10.

Kennedy J, Israel O, Frenkel A, Bar-Shalom R, Azhari H . Super-resolution in PET imaging. IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2006; 25(2):137-47. DOI: 10.1109/TMI.2005.861705. View

11.

Wallach D, Lamare F, Kontaxakis G, Visvikis D . Super-resolution in respiratory synchronized positron emission tomography. IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2011; 31(2):438-48. DOI: 10.1109/TMI.2011.2171358. View

12.

Kustner T, Schwartz M, Martirosian P, Gatidis S, Seith F, Gilliam C . MR-based respiratory and cardiac motion correction for PET imaging. Med Image Anal. 2017; 42:129-144. DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2017.08.002. View

13.

Nam W, Ahn I, Kim K, Kim B, Ra J . Motion-compensated PET image reconstruction with respiratory-matched attenuation correction using two low-dose inhale and exhale CT images. Phys Med Biol. 2013; 58(20):7355-74. DOI: 10.1088/0031-9155/58/20/7355. View

14.

Provost J, Garofalakis A, Sourdon J, Bouda D, Berthon B, Viel T . Simultaneous positron emission tomography and ultrafast ultrasound for hybrid molecular, anatomical and functional imaging. Nat Biomed Eng. 2019; 2(2):85-94. DOI: 10.1038/s41551-018-0188-z. View

15.

Tanter M, Fink M . Ultrafast imaging in biomedical ultrasound. IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2014; 61(1):102-19. DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2014.6689779. View

16.

Thirion J . Image matching as a diffusion process: an analogy with Maxwell's demons. Med Image Anal. 1999; 2(3):243-60. DOI: 10.1016/s1361-8415(98)80022-4. View

17.

Mellor M, Brady M . Phase mutual information as a similarity measure for registration. Med Image Anal. 2005; 9(4):330-43. DOI: 10.1016/j.media.2005.01.002. View

18.

Zeng G, Gullberg G . Unmatched projector/backprojector pairs in an iterative reconstruction algorithm. IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2000; 19(5):548-55. PMC: 5297459. DOI: 10.1109/42.870265. View

19.

Badal A, Badano A . Accelerating Monte Carlo simulations of photon transport in a voxelized geometry using a massively parallel graphics processing unit. Med Phys. 2009; 36(11):4878-80. DOI: 10.1118/1.3231824. View

20.

Constantinescu C, Mukherjee J . Performance evaluation of an Inveon PET preclinical scanner. Phys Med Biol. 2009; 54(9):2885-99. PMC: 2838767. DOI: 10.1088/0031-9155/54/9/020. View