PET/MR: History, Current state, and technology

Integrated positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MR) combines the molecular sensitivity of PET with the superior soft-tissue contrast and multiparametric capabilities of MRI, enabling simultaneous acquisition and improved spatial–temporal alignment compared with PET/CT. Since its introduction, PET/MR has evolved through major detector and system-level innovations, particularly the adoption of avalanche photodiodes and silicon photomultipliers, enabling fully integrated clinical systems. PET/MR presents unique technical challenges and opportunities. This review summarizes the historical development and current state of PET/MR systems and highlights key methodological advances, including attenuation correction, MRI-assisted motion correction, anatomically guided PET reconstruction, spatiotemporal denoising for dynamic imaging, and imaging-derived input function (IDIF) techniques. A brief discussion about clinical applications will be presented. Overall, PET/MR represents a powerful, evolving hybrid imaging platform with significant potential to advance precision medicine and quantitative imaging.