Improvements of the ClearPET^{TM}Neuro small animal PET scanner

por Karl Ziemons (Instituto de Electrónica, Forschungszentrum Jülich)

miércoles 23 abr. 2008 12:00 → 13:00 Europe/Madrid

Sala Reuniones Sotano (Edf. Institutos de Investigación)

The CRYSTAL CLEAR collaboration, in short CCC, is a consortium of 12 academic institutions, mainly from Europe, joining efforts in the area of developing instrumentation for nuclear medicine and medical imaging. In the framework of the CCC a high performance small animal PET system, called ClearPET, was developed by using new technologies in electronics and crystals in a phoswich arrangement combining two types of lutetium-based scintillator materials: LSO:Ce and LuYAP:Ce. While in recently developed dedicated small animal PET systems a high spatial resolution of about 1.5mm was the main research interest, it has become clear that it is equally important not to sacrifice the sensitivity of the scanners since the specific activity of the radiotracers used may be limited. The gantry allows rotation of the detector modules as well as tilting by 90 degrees to measure non-human primates in an upright sitting position. The opening diameter of the ring is variable between 130mm and 300mm, the axial detector length is 110mm. First measurements will be presented.