PET scanners have been extensively used for over a decade for treatment monitoring and diagnosis in nuclear medicine. The idea of total-body PET has the potential to be the next major advance in PET detector technology, since the inclusion of time-of-flight. These types of scanners are able to scan the whole body of the patient with a single bed position, due to the length of their tubes. While these types of scanners show extended field-of-view and high efficiency, their main drawback is their low spatial resolution. With the aim of improving the spatial resolution in specific areas when measuring with a total-body PET scanner a probe is being developed.
The assembled probe is formed of a SiPM and a monolithic scintillation crystal (CeBr3). For the readout of the SiPM signal the TOFPET2 ASIC from PETsys has been chosen due to its good performance for PET in terms of spatial and time resolutions. Furthermore, the PETsys electronics has the capability to generate a programmable trigger signal, which is used to synchronise the probe and the PET scanner data.
Characterisation tests of the probe have been performed with a 22-Na point-like source. The proof-of-concept of the probe has been tested in a Preclinical Super Argus PET/CT scanner for small animals. A preliminary result of the reconstructed data using a 22-Na point-like source, measured with the probe and the scanner, confirm the
feasibility of the proposed setup.
IFIC Experimental Seminar organizers