Mri with improved segmentation in the presence of susceptibility artifacts

A system that facilitates mitigating local susceptibility artifacts in magnetic resonance (MR) images, comprising:

• a processor configured to:
• receive information describing one or more parameters of an artifact source in a patient;
• perform a table lookup to identify a surrogate soft tissue device as a function of at least one of the one or more parameters of the artifact source;
• and
• an MR scanner that acquires MR scan data of the patient with the surrogate soft tissue device positioned thereon;
• wherein the processor is further configured to:
• reconstruct an MR image from the acquired scan data, the MR image including a surrogate boundary formed by the surrogate soft tissue device;
• and
• segmenting the MR image.

A method of mitigating local susceptibility artifacts in magnetic resonance (MR) images, comprising:

• positioning a surrogate soft tissue device on the patient over an identified artifact source within the patient;
• acquiring MR scan data of the patient and the surrogate soft tissue device;
• reconstructing an MR image from the acquired scan data, the MR image including a surrogate boundary formed by the surrogate soft tissue device;
• segmenting the MR image;
• generating attenuation correction factors from the segmented MR image data;
• acquiring positron emission tomography (PET) scan data of the patient;
• reconstructing the PET data into a PET image;
• correcting attenuation in the PET image using the generated attenuation correction factors;
• and
• outputting an attenuation corrected PET image.