title: PET/MRI of central nervous system: current status and future perspective.
abstract: Imaging plays an increasingly important role in the early diagnosis, prognosis prediction and therapy response evaluation of central nervous system (CNS) diseases. The newly emerging hybrid positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MRI) can perform "one-stop-shop" evaluation, including anatomic, functional, biochemical and metabolic information, even at the molecular level, for personalised diagnoses and treatments of CNS diseases. However, there are still several problems to be resolved, such as appropriate PET detectors, attenuation correction and so on. This review will introduce the basic physical principles of PET/MRI and its potential clinical applications in the CNS. We also provide the future perspectives for this field.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  • PET/MRI can simultaneously provide anatomic, functional, biochemical and metabolic information. • PET/MRI has promising potential in various central nervous system diseases. • Research on the future implementation of PET/MRI is challenging and encouraging.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Imaging, Jinling Hospital, Medical School of Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210002, China.
authors.forename: Zhen Lu
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Imaging, Jinling Hospital, Medical School of Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210002, China. kevinzhlj@163.com.
authors.forename: Long Jiang
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D002493:Central Nervous System Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D064847:Multimodal Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D051598:Whole Body Imaging / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Brain tumour; Epilepsy; Neurodegenerative diseases; PET/MRI; Stroke