Cardiac, respiratory, and patient body motion artifacts
degrade the image quality and quantitative accuracy of
the nuclear medicine imaging which may lead to incorrect
diagnosis, unnecessary treatment and insufficient therapy.
We present a new miniaturized system including joint micro electromechanical (MEMS) accelerometer and gyroscope sensors for simultaneous extraction of cardiac and
respiratory signals. We employ two tri-axial joint MEMS
sensors for selecting an optimal trigger point in a cardiac
and respiratory cycle. The 6-axis motion sensing helps
to detect candidate features for cardiac and respiratory
gating in Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging.
The aim of this study was to validate MEMS-derived signals against traditional Real-time Position Management
(RPM) and electrocardiography (ECG) measurement systems in 4 healthy volunteers. High agreement and correlation were found between cardiac and respiratory cycle
intervals. These promising first results warrant for further
investigations.