Effect of position resolution on LoR discrimination for a dual-head Compton camera

Abstract

With the current increase in effective germanium semiconductor detection technology, a positron emission tomography system comprising two opposing HPGe detectors is under development. This type of detection offers not only improvement to some aspects of PET, but also the ability to record single-photon information in the detection process. This information can be used in stand-alone imaging, and also as an additional information source in the PET process. Discrimination based on this single-photon information was proposed; however, the effectiveness of this discrimination is dependent on the resolution of the single-photon information. Simulations of the detection system, in which the positional resolution of the interaction information is variable, was conducted. The single-photon information has then been used in the PET imaging process and its effect on image improvement shown. Much like mechanical collimation, electronic collimation may be used to remove false LoRs from an image, at the expense of efficiency. Moreover, unlike mechanical collimation, this trade off may be dynamically adjusted post data acquisition.