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Design and Performance Evaluation of Sipm-Based High-Resolution Dedicated Brain Positron Emission Tomography Scanner: A Simulation Study Publisher



Zare T1, 2 ; Sheikhzadeh P1, 3 ; Teimourian Fard B2 ; Ghafarian P4, 5 ; Ay MR1, 2
Authors
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Authors Affiliations
  1. 1. Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran
  2. 2. Research Center for Molecular and Cellular Imaging (RCMCI), Advanced Medical Technologies and Equipment Institute (AMTEI), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
  3. 3. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Imam Khomeini Hospital Complex, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
  4. 4. Chronic Respiratory Diseases Research Center, National Research Institute of Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (NRITLD), Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
  5. 5. PET/CT and Cyclotron Center, Masih Daneshvari Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Source: Journal of Medical Physics Published:2024


Abstract

Purpose/Aim: The increasing population age highlights the critical need for early brain disease diagnosis, especially in disorders such as dementia. Consequently, a notable focus has been on developing dedicated brain positron emission tomography (PET) scanners, which offer higher resolution and sensitivity than whole-body PET scanners. This study aims to design and performance evaluation of an LYSO-based dedicated brain PET scanner. Materials and Methods: We developed a dedicated brain PET using Monte Carlo simulation based on cylindrical geometry. Each detector block consisted of a 23 × 23 array of 2 mm × 2 mm × 15 mm LYSO crystals coupled with SiPM. The performance of this scanner was evaluated based on the NEMA NU-2-2018 standard, focusing on analyzing various energy windows and coincidence time windows (CTWs). Results: The results demonstrated that the noise equivalent count rate (NECR) peaked at each CTW in the 408-680 keV energy window. In addition, increasing the CTWs from 3 ns to 10 ns resulted in a decrease of 9% in sensitivity and an increase of 63% in NECR. Furthermore, the study findings highlight that using a time-of-flight (TOF) resolution of 250 ps can substantially improve image contrast relative to non-TOF reconstruction. Conclusions: We conclude that employing a broader energy window and a narrower CTW can significantly enhance the scanner's performance regarding sensitivity and NECR. Furthermore, incorporating LYSO pixelated crystals with TOF information will facilitate the generation of high-resolution and high-contrast images. © 2024 Journal of Medical Physics.