Abstract
In recent decades, PET scanners have been widely used for diagnosis and treatment monitoring in nuclear medicine. The continuous effort of the scientific community has led to improvements in scanner performance. Total-body PET is one of the latest upgrades in PET scanners. These kinds of scanners are able to scan the whole body of the patient with a single bed position, since the scanner tube is long enough for the patient to fit inside. While these scanners show unprecedented efficiency and extended field-of-view, a drawback is their low spatial resolution compared to dedicated scanners. In order to improve the spatial resolution of specific areas when measuring with a total-body PET scanner, the IRIS group at IFIC-Valencia is developing a probe. The proposed setup of the probe contains a monolithic scintillation crystal and a SiPM. The signal of the probe is read out by a TOFPET2 ASIC from PETsys, which has shown good performance for PET in terms of spatial and time resolutions. Furthermore, the PETsys technology generates a trigger signal that will be used to time synchronise the probe and the scanner. The proof-of-concept of the probe will be tested in a Preclinical Super Argus PET/CT scanner for small animals located at IFIC. Preliminary simulations of the scanner and the probe under ideal conditions show a slight improvement in the position reconstruction compared to the data obtained with the scanner, therefore we expect a considerable improvement when using the probe in a total-body PET scanner. Characterisation tests of the probe have been performed with a 22Na point-like source, obtaining an energy resolution of 9.09% for the 511 keV energy peak and a temporal resolution of 619 ps after time walk correction. The next step of the project is to test the probe measuring in temporal coincidence with the scanner.
Highlights
T HE development of new PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanners with improved performance is still an important line of research in nuclear medicine
One current line of research is the study of a total-body scanner, the development of which would represent an improvement on the current features of PET scanners [1]
The limitation in spatial resolution is a result of the detector module design, the positron range and the noncollinearity of the detected photons [3]
Summary
T HE development of new PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanners with improved performance is still an important line of research in nuclear medicine. One current line of research is the study of a total-body scanner, the development of which would represent an improvement on the current features of PET scanners [1]. The typical spatial resolution of reconstructed PET images is between 4 and 6 mm [2]. The limitation in spatial resolution is a result of the detector module design, the positron range and the noncollinearity of the detected photons [3]. Using smaller detector modules in PET scanners would improve the spatial resolution
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