Digital Coincidence Processing for the RatCAP Conscious Rat Brain PET Scanner

The RatCAP has been designed and constructed to image the awake rat brain. In order to maximize system performance, offline digital coincidence data processing algorithms including offset delay correction and prompt and delayed coincidence detection have been developed and validated. With offset delay correction using a singular value decomposition (SVD) technique, overall time resolution was improved from 32.6 ns to 17.6 ns FWHM. The experimental results confirm that the ratio of prompts (or trues) to randoms was improved because a smaller timing window could be used. ¹⁸F-fluoride rat bone scan data was reconstructed with our fully 3-D MLEM with a highly accurate detector response model using Monte Carlo simulation.