Design Optimization of a Time-Of-Flight, Breast PET Scanner

A dedicated breast positron emission tomography (PET) scanner with limited angle geometry can provide flexibility in detector placement around the patient as well as the ability to combine it with other imaging modalities. A primary challenge of a stationary limited angle scanner is the reduced image quality due to artifacts present in the reconstructed image leading to a loss in quantitative information. Previously, it has been shown that using time-of-flight (TOF) information in image reconstruction can help reduce these image artifacts arising due to missing angular projections. Our goal in this work is to optimize the TOF, breast scanner design by performing studies for estimating image uniformity and lesion activity uptake as a function of system timing resolution, scanner angular coverage and shape. Our results show that (i) 1.5 × 1.5 × 15 mm³ lutetium oxy-orthosilicate (LSO) crystals provide a high spatial resolution and system sensitivity relative to clinical scanners, (ii) 2/3 angular coverage scanner design with TOF timing resolution less than 600 ps is appropriate for providing a tomographic image with fewer artifacts and good lesion uptake estimation relative to other partial ring designs studied in this work, (iii) a flat scanner design with 2/3 angular coverage is affected more by larger parallax error than a curved scanner geometry with the same angular coverage, but provides more uniform lesion contrast estimate over the imaging field-of-view (FOV), (iv) 2/3 angular coverage, flat, 300 ps TOF scanner design (for short, practical scan times of ≤ 5 min per breast) provides similar precision of contrast recovery coefficient (CRC) values to a full curved, non-TOF scanner, and (v) employing depth-of-interaction (DOI) measuring detector and/or implementing resolution modeling (RM) in image reconstruction lead to improved and more uniform spatial resolution and lesion contrast over the whole FOV.