Time-of-Flight PET for Improved Whole-Body Imaging

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application is a competitive renewal of R01-CA-113941 and seeks to address the needs of heath care, particularly in the area of cancer. The overall goal of our project is to investigate and improve time-of-flight (TOF) positron emission tomographic (PET) imaging and to develop technology, both hardware and software, for the next generation of TOF PET imaging instruments. Inclusion of TOF information in PET reconstructions has been demonstrated to improve image quality through better signal-to-noise, faster and more uniform convergence, better lesion detectability, and more accurate quantification. The dependence of these metrics on TOF resolution has not been adequately quantified for realistic distributions, so we will study this to realize the maximum potential of TOF. Advanced technology for TOF PET is already under development, and we designed this application to carry on this work. In this renewal we propose to continue a systematic approach to image improvement that includes specific aims to develop new TOF detectors with improved timing and spatial resolutions, complete and evaluate waveform sampling electronics to extract maximal information from each interaction and to control calibrations more accurately, develop data correction methods to improve quantitative accuracy, and evaluate TOF imaging for an increased dynamic range of imaging conditions. We will continue to study the impact of TOF on clinical FDG imaging in terms of lesion detectability, quantitative accuracy and precision, and we will expand our investigation to assess the impact of TOF on lower count images with the goal of reducing FDG dose for clinical imaging, given the growing concern regarding diagnostic radiation doses. Better performance with low doses (or count statistics) enabled by TOF will also improve imaging for the expanding clinical research applications using longer-lived tracers that may result in lower count datasets. Our project will include well- controlled phantom studies and patient studies so that we can quantify the benefit of TOF for a wider range of clinically important conditions than previously studied, and so that we can determine which factors, from signal detection through image generation, are most important for improved TOF PET for the future.