Initial Results from the Donner 600 Crystal Positron Tomograph

Abstract

We describe a positron tomograph using a single ring of 600 close-packed 3 mm wide bismuth germanate (BGO) crystals coupled to 14 mm phototubes. The phototube preamplifier circuit derives a timing pulse from the first photoelectron, and sends it to address and coincidence circuits only if the integrated pulse height is within a pre-set window. The timing delays and pulse height windows for all 600 detectors and the coincidence timing windows are computer adjustable. An orbiting positron source is used for transmission measurements and a look-up table is used to reject scattered and random coincidences that do not pass through the source. Data can be acquired using a stationary mode for 1.57 mm lateral sampling or the two-position clam sampling mode for 0.79 mm lateral sampling. High maximum data rates are provided by 45 parallel coincidence circuits and 4 parallel histogram memory units. With two-position sampling and 1.57 mm bins, the reconstructed point spread function (PSF) of a 0.35 mm diam 22Na wire source at the center of the tomograph is circular with 2.9 mm full-width at half-maximum (fwhm) and the PSF at a distance of 8 cm from the center is elliptical with a radial fwhm of 4.0 mm and tangential fwhm of 3.0 mm.