Abstract
Positron emission tomography (PET) is the most diffuse method to image molecular processes within the human body. This paper is meant as a brief overview of the physics related to its imaging modality and of its numerous applications. Several references are provided where more details on the topic can be found. The first section describes the working principle of PET, the type of detectors used in a PET scanner, and the most important figures of merit to determine its performance, namely sensitivity, spatial resolution and time resolution, the latter revelant in particular for the so-called time-of-flight PET. The second section summarizes the evolution and trends for PET in clinical applications, focusing on hadrontherapy monitoring, total-body scanners, multimodal and dedicated PET systems, high spatial and temporal resolution detectors, and innovative PET radiopharmaceuticals.
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