EndoTOFPET-US a novel multimodal tool for endoscopy and Positron Emission Tomography

The EndoTOFPET-US project aims to jointly exploit Time-Of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography (TOFPET) and ultrasound endoscopy with a multi-modal instrument for the development of new biomarkers for pancreas and prostate oncology. The paper outlines the functionality of the proposed instrument and the challenges for its realization. The high level of miniaturization and integration poses strong demands to the fields of scintillating crystallography, ultra-fast photon detection, highly integrated electronics and system integration. Solutions are presented to obtain a coincidence time resolution better than 200 ps and a spatial resolution of -1 mm with an asymmetric TOFPET detector. A tracking system with better than 1 mm spatial resolution precision enables the online alignment of the system. The detector design, the production and test status of the single detector components, and the integration plans are discussed.