High sensitivity detectors for positron emission tomography

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The current generation of positron emission tomography (PET) scanners are optimized for performance at the high count rates seen when large amounts of radioactivity are injected into a subject.  In many new applications of PET imaging, such as tracking radio-labeled cells in vivo, the amount of radioactivity used is very low, resulting in very poor images.  In this work, we seek to improve the performance of current generation PET systems at these very low count rates and to develop new PET detection systems designed specifically for these low count imaging tasks.  This Research Tools and Instruments grant will fund a data acquisition system that will be used in our laboratory to evaluate the performance of current generation PET detectors as well as new detectors designed and constructed in our laboratory.  These improvements will lead to improvements in the quantitative accuracy of PET images and expand the type of studies that can be done using PET imaging techniques.