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Performance of the Tachyon Time-of-Flight PET Camera

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [1]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Univ. of California, Davis, CA (United States)

We have constructed and characterized a time-of-flight Positron Emission Tomography (TOF PET) camera called the Tachyon. The Tachyon is a single-ring Lutetium Oxyorthosilicate (LSO) based camera designed to obtain significantly better timing resolution than the ~ 550 ps found in present commercial TOF cameras, in order to quantify the benefit of improved TOF resolution for clinically relevant tasks. The Tachyon's detector module is optimized for timing by coupling the 6.15 ×25 mm2 side of 6.15 ×6.15 ×25 mm3 LSO scintillator crystals onto a 1-inch diameter Hamamatsu R-9800 PMT with a super-bialkali photocathode. We characterized the camera according to the NEMA NU 2-2012 standard, measuring the energy resolution, timing resolution, spatial resolution, noise equivalent count rates and sensitivity. The Tachyon achieved a coincidence timing resolution of 314 ps +/- 20 ps FWHM over all crystal-crystal combinations. Experiments were performed with the NEMA body phantom to assess the imaging performance improvement over non-TOF PET. We find that the results show that at a matched contrast, incorporating 314 ps TOF reduces the standard deviation of the contrast by a factor of about 2.3.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1257993
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 62; ISSN 0018-9499
Publisher:
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Cited By (4)

Performance of a new accelerating-electrode-equipped fast-time-response PMT coupled with fast LGSO journal March 2018
Lesion detection and quantification performance of the Tachyon-I time-of-flight PET scanner: phantom and human studies journal March 2018
Theoretical study of the benefit of long axial field-of-view PET on region of interest quantification journal June 2018
Performance evaluation of the next generation solid-state digital photon counting PET/CT system journal November 2018

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