Improving quantification of weak sources in positron emission tomography

正电子发射断层扫描，或PET，是一种核医学成像技术，它可以产生注射到受试者体内的放射性示踪剂的生物分布图像。PET最常见的临床应用是诊断和分期癌症，因为它在检测转移性疾病方面具有优异的敏感性。不幸的是，PET是一种非常昂贵的成像方法，因为PET扫描仪本身和回旋加速器产生的放射性染料的成本都很高。PET系统设计的改进降低了每位患者的成本，可以导致PET的更广泛使用，从而通过更准确的分期改善癌症患者的治疗。这些系统的改进是通过在工程和物理研究实验室中对新的探测器设计、处理电子和数据处理算法的基础研究来完成的。这项发现基金将资助一个研究项目，重点是开发和测试PET成像的新技术。在提出的研究中，我们将通过测量和计算机模拟来检查当前一代PET扫描仪在低计数率下图像质量和量化损失的来源。我们将利用这些结果来帮助设计和建造新型的高灵敏度PET探测器。提高PET检测器的灵敏度将导致PET在注射活性量有严格限制的应用中的使用扩大，例如儿科成像或研究。

Positron emission tomography, or PET, is a nuclear medicine imaging technique which yields images of the biological distribution of a radioactive tracer that has been injected into a subject. The most common clinical use of PET is in diagnosing and staging cancer because of its excellent sensitivity for detecting metastatic disease. Unfortunately, PET is a very expensive imaging method because of the high cost of both the PET scanner itself and of the cyclotron produced radioactive dyes. Improvements in PET system design that reduce per-patient cost can lead to more widespread use of PET and consequently improve the treatment of cancer patients through more accurate staging. These system improvements are accomplished through basic research into new detector designs, processing electronics and data handling algorithms in engineering and physics research laboratories. This Discovery grant will fund a research program focusing on developing and testing new technologies for PET imaging. In the proposed research we will examine the sources of loss of image quality and quantification at low count rates in current generation PET scanners both through measurements and computer simulations. We will use these results to aid in the design and construction of novel high sensitivity detectors for PET. Increasing the sensitivity of PET detectors will lead to expansion of the use of PET in applications that have stringent limits of the amount of injected activity, such as pediatric imaging or in research studies.