Sponsor:
This work has been partially funded by projects TEC2004-07052-C02 of Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and CDTEAM, program CENIT, Ministerio de Industria, Spain.
Most small animal PET scanners are based on
arrays of pixelated scintillators crystals. As the read-out of individual pixels would be too expensive, identification of the
crystal of interaction is usually made by center of energy methods based for instance oMost small animal PET scanners are based on
arrays of pixelated scintillators crystals. As the read-out of individual pixels would be too expensive, identification of the
crystal of interaction is usually made by center of energy methods based for instance on Anger logic. This allows for a reduction in the number of signals to be acquired, but prevents the identification of multi-hit events, that is, events in that one (or
several) photon produces several hits in the detector, thus blurring the correct positioning of the interaction. Improving the
identification of the pixel of interaction is pursued in this work by combining all the information acquired by the scanner without
increasing the number of signals. The probability for every individual event for being single or multi-pixel is estimated from
the XY positioning and energy information. This probability is fed into a 3D-OSEM iterative statistical reconstruction method.
Every coincidence event detected may be analyzed combining information such as deposited energy, PMT XY location, time
difference between both singles of the coincidence and coincidence and single rates, if available. With the proposed
method, improved peak/noise ratio and better resolution are obtained without the introduction of additional hardware.[+][-]
Description:
Proceeding of: 2007 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record (NSS '07), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, Oct. 27 - Nov. 3, 2007