Time-of-flight PET for Improved whole-body imaging

描述(由申请人提供)：本提案的总体目标是为下一代PET成像仪器开发技术。改进的PET成像技术承诺帮助和支持癌症研究、诊断和治疗，这应该会改善医疗保健和患者管理。新的PET仪器将基于溴化镧闪烁体，能够实现出色的能量分辨率、空间分辨率和飞行时间(TOP)测量。TOP技术需要精确测量两条511keV伽马射线之间的时间差，这两条射线是由正电子湮没标记在PET示踪剂上的放射性同位素(如18F)引起的。TOP信息减少了图像重建中的固有噪声，从而提高了图像质量。我们的建议旨在评估全身顶端PET仪器的性能，同时也将在成本效益和可靠性方面满足现代成像仪器的必要要求。TOP的基本技术已经在开发中，因此我们在本提案中强调了对系统的每个方面进行评估，最初是为了优化新技术，但最终是为了进一步开发这些技术以提高性能。调查将包括闪烁探测器的性能、探测器的校准和处理电子设备的稳定性、数据校正技术和图像重建算法。我们的目标是开发符合镀锡分辨率为200 ps或更高的探测器，具有稳定的电子设备，并能够匹配这种定时精度。我们将开发带有物理效果建模的列表模式顶部图像重建，并研究更快、更快的重建方法。我们将研究TOP对量化准确性的影响，这对癌症的临床和研究PET研究都很重要，并评估TOP对SNR的改善。我们将使用预测人类识别和量化病变中的活性摄取能力的方法，从而指导TOP PET用于癌症研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this proposal is to develop technology for the next generation of PET imaging instruments. Improved PET imaging technology promises to aid and support cancer research, diagnosis, and treatment, which should lead to improved health care and patient management. The new PET instrument will be based on Lanthanum Bromide scintillators capable of excellent energy resolution, spatial resolution, and time-of-flight (TOP) measurement. The TOP technique requires an accurate measurement of the time difference between the two 511 keV gamma rays which result from the positron annihilation of the radioactive isotope (e.g. 18F) tagged to the PET tracer. The TOP information reduces the inherent noise in image reconstruction, thereby improving image quality. Our proposal seeks to evaluate performance of whole-body TOP PET instrumentation that will also fulfill the necessary requirements of a modern imaging instrument in terms of cost-effectiveness and reliability. The basic technology for TOP is already under development, and so we have emphasized in this proposal an evaluation each aspect of the system, initially to optimize the new technology,' but ultimately to further develop these techniques for improved performance. Investigations will encompass the scintillation detector performance, the calibrations of the detector and stabilization of processing electronics, data correction techniques, and the image reconstruction algorithm. Our goal is to develop detectors with coincidence tinning resolution of 200 ps or better, with electronics that are stable and capable of matching this timing accuracy. We will develop list-mode TOP image reconstruction with modeling of physical effects, and also investigate faster, rebinning methods of reconstruction. We will study the impact of TOP on accuracy of quantification, which is important for both clinical and research PET studies of cancer, and evaluate SNR improvements with TOP. We will use methodologies that are predictive of the human's ability to identify and quantify activity uptake in lesions, thereby guiding the utilization of TOP PET for the study of cancer.