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 Deep ). (2) Dixon MRI using the vendor-provided atlas-based method (PET Atlas ). (3) CT, serving as reference (PET CT ). 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 Deep and −1.3 ± 21.8% for PET Atlas . The error in mean PET uptake in bone/air was much lower for PET Deep (−4%/12%) than for PET Atlas (−15%/84%) and PET Deep 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 Deep and −3.5 ± 4.6% for PET Atlas . 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.