PET investigation of a fluidized particle: spatial and temporal resolution and short term motion

Abstract

The motion of a single particle in a fluidized bed has been followed with high temporal and spatial resolution using an ECAT EXACT HR+ PET camera. An account is given of the analysis of the output from the camera, and the calculation of the particle position. The particle position was determined with a precision of 1 mm once per ms. The scatter in the data was calculated using two methods, the variate method and a linear fit method. A comparison of the still bed with the fluidized bed did not reveal any fast particle movement in the latter. It is shown that optimal smoothing of the time series, without losing information about the particle movement, is obtained if the arithmetic averages of 10-50 data points are plotted against time.