Design and proof of concept of a double-panel TOF-PET system

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a well-known imaging technology for the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of several diseases. Most PET scanners use a Ring-Shaped Detector Configuration (RSDC), which helps obtain homogeneous image quality but are restricted to an invariable Field-of-View (FOV), scarce spatial resolution, and low sensitivity. Alternatively, few PET systems use Open Detector Configurations (ODC) to permit an accessible FOV adaptable to different target sizes, thus optimizing sensitivity. Yet, to compensate the lack of angular coverage in ODC-PET, developing a detector with high-timing performance is mandatory to enable Time-of-Flight (TOF) techniques during reconstruction. The main goal of this work is to provide a proof of concept PET scanner appropriate for constructing the new generation of ODC-PET suitable for biopsy guidance and clinical intervention during acquisition. The designed detector has to be compact and robust, and its requirements in terms of performance are spatial and time resolutions < 2 mm and < 200 ps, respectively.

The present work includes a simulation study of an ODC-PET based on 2-panels with variable distance. The image quality (IQ) and Derenzo phantoms have been simulated and evaluated. The phantom simulations have also been performed using a ring-shaped PET for comparison purposes of the ODC approach with conventional systems. Then, an experimental evaluation of a prototype detector that has been designed following the simulation results is presented. This study focused on tuning the ASIC parameters and evaluating the scintillator surface treatment (ESR and TiO₂), and configuration that yields the best Coincidence Time Resolution (CTR). Moreover, the scalability of the prototype to a module of 64 × 64mm² and its preliminary evaluation regarding pixel identification are provided.

The simulation results reported sensitivity (%) values at the center of the FOV of 1.96, 1.63, and 1.18 for panel distances of 200, 250, and 300 mm, respectively. The IQ reconstructed image reported good uniformity (87%) and optimal CRC values, and the Derenzo phantom reconstruction suggests a system resolution of 1.6-2 mm. The experimental results demonstrate that using TiO₂ coating yielded better detector performance than ESR. Acquired data was filtered by applying an energy window of ± 30% at the photopeak level. After filtering, best CTR of 230 ± 2 ps was achieved for an 8 × 8 LYSO pixel block with 2 × 2 × 12mm³ each. The detector performance remained constant after scaling-up the prototype to a module of 64 $$ 64mm², and the flood map demonstrates the module's capabilities to distinguish the small pixels; thus, a spatial resolution < 2 mm (pixel size) is achieved.

The simulated results of this biplanar scanner show high performance in terms of image quality and sensitivity. These results are comparable to state-of-the-art PET technology and, demonstrate that including TOF information minimizes the image artifacts due to the lack of angular projections. The experimental results concluded that using TiO₂ coating provide the best performance. The results suggest that this scanner may be suitable for organ study, breast, prostate, or cardiac applications, with good uniformity and CRC.