From detectors towards systems: enabling clinical TOF-PET with monolithic scintillators

Nuclear medical imaging (NMI) is the branch of nuclear medicine aimed at imaging the in-vivo distribution of specific compounds labeled with radioactive elements (radiotracers) inside animals (preclinical applications) or patients (clinical applications). These compounds are developed to follow metabolic pathways or for binding to receptor...

Sub-3 mm, near-200 ps TOF/DOI-PET imaging with monolithic scintillator detectors in a 70 cm diameter tomographic setup

Recently, a monolithic scintillator detector for time-of-flight (TOF)/depth-of-interaction (DOI) positron emission tomography (PET) was developed. It has a detector spatial resolution of ∼1.7 mm full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM), a coincidence resolving time (CRT) of ∼215 ps FWHM, and ∼4.7 mm FWHM DOI resolution. Here, we demonstrate, for the...

Improved image quality using monolithic scintillator detectors with dual-sided readout in a whole-body TOF-PET ring: A simulation study

We have recently built and characterized the performance of a monolithic scintillator detector based on a 32 mm × 32 mm × 22 mm LYSO:Ce crystal read out by digital silicon photomultiplier (dSiPM) arrays coupled to the crystal front and back surfaces in a dual-sided readout (DSR) configuration. The detector spatial resolution appeared to be...

Towards monolithic scintillator based TOF-PET systems: Practical methods for detector calibration and operation

Gamma-ray detectors based on thick monolithic scintillator crystals can achieve spatial resolutions <2 mm full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) and coincidence resolving times (CRTs) better than 200 ps FWHM. Moreover, they provide high sensitivity and depth-of-interaction (DOI) information. While these are excellent characteristics for...

A 32 mm × 32 mm × 22 mm monolithic LYSO: Ce detector with dual-sided digital photon counter readout for ultrahigh-performance TOF-PET and TOF-PET/MRI

New applications for positron emission tomography (PET) and combined PET/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are currently emerging, for example in the fields of neurological, breast, and pediatric imaging. Such applications require improved image quality, reduced dose, shorter scanning times, and more precise quantification. This can be...

Time-based position estimation in monolithic scintillator detectors

Gamma-ray detectors based on bright monolithic scintillation crystals coupled to pixelated photodetectors are currently being considered for several applications in the medical imaging field. In a typical monolithic detector, both the light intensity and the time of arrival of the earliest scintillation photons can be recorded by each of the...

Modelling monolithic scintillator detectors for positron emission tomography

Monolithic scintillator detectors are very promising for high-resolution high-sensitivity PET. These detectors consist of several cubic centimetres of scintillating material coupled on one or more sides to position-sensitive avalanche photo-diode (APD) arrays. The coordinates of the entry point of an incoming gamma photon are estimated from the...

Monolithic scintillator detectors for high-resolution positron emission tomography

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a technique for imaging the 3-dimensional distribution of radio-labelled molecules in vivo. This technique plays an increasingly important role in preclinical research involving mice and rats. The small dimensions of these animals impose stringent requirements on both the image resolution and the sensitivity...

Signal to Noise Ratio of APD-Based Monolithic Scintillator Detectors for High Resolution PET