A lower bound on PET timing estimation with pulse pileup
- Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI (United States). Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
- Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI (United States). Div. of Nuclear Medicine
Pulse pileup is an important limiting factor on coincidence detection and timing estimation performance in conventional and time of flight (TOF) PET. In this paper the authors derive a Cramer-Rao (CR) lower found on timing estimator mean-square-error (MSE) when there are multiple overlapping single photon response (SPR) pulses within the photo-detector coincidence window. This bound is then used to study the loss in achievable timing resolution due to varying amounts of pulse overlap. The case of a bi-exponential BGO/Burle 8850 SPR is then considered. The authors show that in this case timing resolution need not degrade significantly even when pulse overlap is quite severe: up to approximately 20% overlap of the leading edges of the overlapping pulses can be tolerated with less than a 25% degradation in achievable timing resolution. This suggests that multiple event separation and improved coincidence resolving time can be attained well beyond the photon saturation limit of current scintillation detectors.
- OSTI ID:
- 5027835
- Journal Information:
- IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States), Vol. 38:2; ISSN 0018-9499
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
POSITRON COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY
PERFORMANCE
PULSE PILEUP
TIME RESOLUTION
COINCIDENCE METHODS
PHOTONS
TIME-OF-FLIGHT METHOD
TIMING PROPERTIES
BOSONS
COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHY
COUNTING TECHNIQUES
DIAGNOSTIC TECHNIQUES
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
EMISSION COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY
MASSLESS PARTICLES
RESOLUTION
TOMOGRAPHY
550602* - Medicine- External Radiation in Diagnostics- (1980-)