Design and development of phantoms capable of continuous motion during simultaneous PET-MR acquisitions

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is an imaging method affected by motion artifacts. PET-MR simultaneous acquisition may provide a means to correct for the effects of motion. Evaluation and development of motion correction techniques requires the development of phantoms capable for continuous and realistic motion. For this study, phantoms have been developed for sequential or simultaneous PET-MR motion-correction experiments. The phantoms contain different levels of deformation. While the first phantom is consisted of rigid materials, the new approach is the use of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) cryogel phantom for this study. The elasticity of the PVA cryogel, combined with the motion by a computer guided motor unit provides the necessary complexity and accuracy of motion, required for sequential or simultaneous PET-MR experiments with motion incorporation. These phantoms, combined with the already established methodology, could provide the advantage to address issues such as the optimization of gating and motion estimation/correction algorithms in PET.