Development of a prototype DOI-TOF-PET scanner

A prototype depth-of-interaction and time-of-flight positron emission tomography (DOI-TOF-PET) scanner was developed to offer enhanced spatial resolution with high sensitivity and high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) in the reconstructed images. The detector ring is 775 mm diameter with 48 mm axial field-of-view (FOV) per ring. The system can be expanded up to three rings. The ring comprises 48 detector modules, each of which consists of four layers of 16 × 16 crystal elements and a 64ch PS-PMT (H8500 position sensitive photomultiplier tube, Hamamatsu Photonics K.K.) optically coupled with silicone resin. The size of the crystal elements are 2.9 mm × 2.9 mm and increase in depth through 5, 6, 7, and 8 mm, from the first to fourth layer, to reduce the sensitivity differences between each layer. The crystal material is used Lu_2xGd_2(1-x)SiO₅ (Hitachi Chemical Co., Ltd.) because of its short decay time, high density and high light yield. A data acquisition board was developed to improve the spatial resolution and the timing resolution of the system. The TDC (time-to-digital Converter) chips (TDC-GPX, Acam Messelectronic) mounted on the board operate in high-resolution mode (R-mode, 27 ps/bin). In addition, a new timing correction method to correct the intrinsic timing difference both each detector and each crystal of the detector by using DOI information was developed. As a result, the average timing resolution of this system was 442 ps (FWHM). Reconstructed image quality with-/without-DOI-TOF technique was evaluated in GATE simulation and a preliminary image was obtained with the prototype system.