Influence of the time of flight information on the reconstruction of in-beam PET data

Positron emission tomography (PET) is the only available technique for an in-situ, non-invasive monitoring of the dose delivery precision in highly conformal ion beam therapy. Significant improvement in the quality of the images reconstructed using time of flight (TOF) information has recently been reported for usual conditions of nuclear PET (relatively high statistics, full ring geometry of the scanner). In order to analyze the advantages for a new in-beam PET system with detectors allowing timing resolution of at least 1.2 ns FWHM, we investigate how the reconstruction of in-beam PET data can profit from the TOF information taking into specific account issues of an in-beam PET system.