Investigation of the count rate performance of General Electric Advance positron emission tomograph

Abstract

A series of 2D and 3D count rate measurements have been carried out on the Advance PET system. The measurements include: NEMA standard protocols; simultaneous imaging of two small vials containing [0-15] water and (F-18); a cardiac insert placed in a water filled elliptical tank; two different head sized cylindrical tanks; and a Hoffman 3D phantom. The data were processed with and without deadtime and scatter corrections. Plots were made of the total count rate, randoms, trues+scatter, scatter corrected trues, and noise equivalent count rate as a function of total activity in the machine and as the mu Ci/cc in the phantoms. The accuracy of deadtime corrections was also measured. In 2D mode, the NEMA standard protocol resulted in maximum 'trues' count rates of 540,000 cps in high sensitivity mode. In 3D mode the head sized cylindrical phantoms yielded a maximum trues rate of approximately 950,000 cps. Recovery of the water half-life was accurate with up to 50 mCi for the cardiac insert in 2D mode.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>