Physical characterization of a time-of-flight positron emission tomography system for whole-body quantitative studies

Abstract

The design of a first PET system using the time of flight (TOF) information, is aimed at whole-body, quantitative, dynamic, 3D studies. It comprises 3 rings of 96 CsF probes and a ring of 96 BaF/sub 2/ probes. The physical performance was measured: spatial transverse and longitudinal resolution for a reconstructed source, sensitivity, time resolution (480 psec +- 28 psec for CsF and 380 psec +-28 psec for BaF/sub 2/), interplane (< 5% for the means difference for a uniform ring source) and intraplane uniformity (< 4% RMS uncertainty). Calibration in absolute concentration was performed with a precision of 2%. Special attention was directed to the specific advantages of the use of fast crystal -PM tubes for TOF measurements: very fast count rate studies, elimination of random events, and improvement of the S/N ratio. Counts rates up to a million counts per sec for each detector are feasible, without loss due to pile up. Actually, the maximum count rate is 450000 events/sec due to the transfert time to magnetic disc in list mode (30 ..mu..Ci/cc). At these rates, the random fraction is 30% of the true coincidences rate, while it is less than 3% for concentration of 1 ..mu..Ci/cc. Themore » sensitivity gain was measured as a function of the object size: 2 for the head of 4.8 the wholebody. Other advantages of TOF as Compton events reduction and the accuracy of attenuation correction coefficients are evaluated for thoracic studies.« less