Deep learning for Dixon MRI-based attenuation correction in PET/MRI of head and neck cancer patients.

Background: Quantitative whole-body PET/MRI relies on accurate patient-specific MRI-based attenuation correction (AC) of PET, which is a non-trivial challenge, especially for the anatomically complex head and neck region. We used a deep learning model developed for dose planning in radiation oncology to derive MRI-based attenuation maps of head and neck cancer patients and evaluated its performance on PET AC.

Methods: Eleven head and neck cancer patients, referred for radiotherapy, underwent CT followed by PET/MRI with acquisition of Dixon MRI. Both scans were performed in radiotherapy position. PET AC was performed with three different patient-specific attenuation maps derived from: (1) Dixon MRI using a deep learning network (PET). (2) Dixon MRI using the vendor-provided atlas-based method (PET). (3) CT, serving as reference (PET). We analyzed the effect of the MRI-based AC methods on PET quantification by assessing the average voxelwise error within the entire body, and the error as a function of distance to bone/air. The error in mean uptake within anatomical regions of interest and the tumor was also assessed.

Results: The average (± standard deviation) PET voxel error was 0.0 ± 11.4% for PET and -1.3 ± 21.8% for PET. The error in mean PET uptake in bone/air was much lower for PET (-4%/12%) than for PET (-15%/84%) and PET also demonstrated a more rapidly decreasing error with distance to bone/air affecting only the immediate surroundings (less than 1 cm). The regions with the largest error in mean uptake were those containing bone (mandible) and air (larynx) for both methods, and the error in tumor mean uptake was -0.6 ± 2.0% for PET and -3.5 ± 4.6% for PET.

Conclusion: The deep learning network for deriving MRI-based attenuation maps of head and neck cancer patients demonstrated accurate AC and exceeded the performance of the vendor-provided atlas-based method both overall, on a lesion-level, and in vicinity of challenging regions such as bone and air.