RPC-PET: A new very high resolution PET technology

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2006

Authors

Blanco, A (Author) Other; Carolino, N (Author) Other; Correia, CMBA (Author) Other; Fazendeiro, L (Author) Other; Ferreira, NC (Author) Other; Marques, MFF (Author) Other; Marques, RF (Author) Other; Fonte, P (Author) Other; Gil, C (Author) Other; Macedo, MP (Author) Other

Journal

Title: IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science

Vol. 53 No. 1

Pages: 2489-2494

ISSN: 0018-9499

Publisher: IEEE

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge - 44 Citations

Scopus - 46 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-004-GTS

DOI: 10.1109/tns.2006.876005

Abstract (EN): In this paper, we present experimental and simulated results from a first prototype of a positron emission tomography (PET) system based on the resistive plate chamber (RPC) technology-a gaseous particle detector. developed for high energy physics. The prototype is aimed at validating the expectations, derived from simulations, of a system with submillimeter spatial image resolution and no parallax error, which may be useful for the imaging of small animals. By imaging a point-like Na-22 source in the transaxial plane, an intrinsic spatial resolution of 0.52 mm FWHM was demonstrated for a system diameter of 60 mm, validating positron range simulations by other authors. A corresponding image spatial resolution of 0.51 mm FWHM was obtained using the standard algorithm of filtered backprojection (FBP) and 0.31 mm FWHM after reconstruction by an ML-EM type algorithm. An optimized complete system was simulated to evaluate sensitivity and system count rate performance for the imaging of mice, suggesting a sensitivity up to 2.1% at the center of the field of view and a peak noise equivalent count rate (NECR) up to 320 Kcps for a total activity of 88 MBq in the phantom.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

No. of pages: 6