Project Grant R01HL182100

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute awarded Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai $1.669 million on August 1, 2026, under the Cardiovascular Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.837) for data-consistent motion-correction reconstruction of PET/MR imaging targeting coronary atherosclerotic plaque activity.

The research addresses motion artifacts that degrade spatial resolution and quantitative accuracy in coronary PET imaging, particularly for low-count tracers such as 68GA-DOTATATE. Current PET/MR motion correction methods are not optimized for coronary imaging when gating in both cardiac and respiratory dimensions at necessary spatial resolution, leading to undersampled image frames that challenge motion estimation. The work will develop and validate motion-corrected PET reconstruction methods across multiple tracers and low-count conditions, specifically for inflammation-targeted imaging in coronary atherosclerosis. The study aims to correlate inflammation-targeted PET/MR with plaque burden and features on coronary CT angiography and 18F-sodium fluoride uptake, establishing improved methods to direct emerging therapies such as PCSK-9 and IL-1B inhibitors in acute coronary syndrome risk stratification.

Performance occurs at Mount Sinai's New York, New York location (10029). The period of performance runs through April 30, 2028. This is a project grant, the standard assistance type for individual research proposals within the NHLBI competitive research portfolio.