Characteristics of Small Barium Fluoride (BaF2) Scintillator for High Intrinsic Resolution Time-of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography

The implementation of BaF2 for high spatial and TOF resolution PET cameras has been investigated. Intrinsic characteristics relating to the exclusive use of its fast 220 nm component, such as self-absorption, reflection material, optical coupling, energy resolution, timing resolution, number of fast photons, photofractrion, coincidence efficiency, and photomultiplier are presented. Extrinsic characteristics such as intrinsic spatial resolution variation with radius, the need for tungsten partition and the optimization of detector ring radius and tungsten partition thickness were investigated. Schemes of using multiple scintillators on a single PMT due to the absence of small PMT with small transit time spread and economic reasons are also presented.