NEMA-2008 and In-Vivo Animal and Plant Imaging Performance of the Large FOV Preclinical Digital PET/CT System Discoverist 180

Abstract

The RAYCAN Discoverist 180 (RAYCAN D180) is a novel preclinical positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) integrated system for the imaging of small- and medium-sized animals and plants. We measured a system resolution of (2.56±0.04) mm (radial), (2.46±0.05) mm (transverse), and (1.67 ± 0.03) mm (axial) at the center of the field of view using a filtered backprojection reconstruction algorithm. An OSEM-PSF-3D reconstruction algorithm improves the spatial resolution to (1.34±0.04) mm (radial), (1.35±0.05) mm (transverse), and (1.64±0.04) mm (axial). The peak noise equivalent count rate of the system is (713 ± 2) kcps, (207 ± 2) kcps, and (47 ± 1) kcps reached at approximately 97 MBq for the mouse-, rat- and monkey-like phantoms, respectively. This result is approximately $2\times $ higher and is reached at approximately $3\times $ higher activity in comparison with most of the existing commercial and research scanners. The peak absolute system sensitivity is (4.00±0.02)% and is competitive with state-of-the-art preclinical PET scanners. We found an image uniformity of (4.86±0.04)%. Finally, we report the static PET/CT scan of a mouse and of a leaf of Epipremnum aureum, and the time-activity curves of the [18F]-FDG metabolism in mouse left myocardial ventricle and kidneys obtained with a PET/CT scan in dynamic modality.