Abstract: Nuclear image data generated by a multimodal imaging device, such as a combined position emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance (MR) scanner (12, 14), is attenuation-corrected with a combined patient-specific attenuation correction (AC) map and an AC map template (70) for an MR coil (72) that is present in both the nuclear and MR scanning procedures. A template library (46) contains templates for each of a plurality of MR coils and other accessories. Each template is generated on one of two manners. The coil may be imaged inside the PET scanner 14 with the transmission source 16 (e.g., Ge-68 or Cs-137). A transmission image 48 is reconstructed using the known algorithms and may be used as the AC template directly. Alternatively, the template can be generated by creating a global histogram of the transmission image and identifying segments of the coil or other accessory. An average linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) value is determined from the distribution of the histogram.

Abstract: Nuclear image data generated by a multimodal imaging device, such as a combined position emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance (MR) scanner (12, 14), is attenuation-corrected with a combined patient-specific attenuation correction (AC) map and an AC map template (70) for an MR coil (72) that is present in both the nuclear and MR scanning procedures. template library (46) contains templates for each of a plurality of MR coils and other accessories. Each template is generated on one of two manners. The coil may be imaged inside the PET scanner 14 with the transmission source 16 (e.g., Ge-68 or Cs-137). A transmission image 48 is reconstructed using the known algorithms and may be used as the AC template directly. Alternatively, the template can be generated by creating a global histogram of the transmission image and identifying segments of the coil or other accessory. An average linear attenuation coefficient (LAC) value is determined from the distribution of the histogram.