Speaker
Description
We are studying new detection concepts, methods, and system designs to advance time-of-flight (TOF) positron emission tomography (PET). In this talk we will describe three efforts in this direction. The first is a ‘radio-frequency-penetrable’ PET insert design that we are building for simultaneous brain TOF-PET/MRI of neurological disorders that employs novel design features to enable ~230 ps FWHM annihilation photon pair coincidence time resolution (CTR), which would be a notable achievement for MR-compatible TOF-PET. The second is a TOF-PET/CT system under construction for cancer imaging applications that achieves ~100 picoseconds (ps) FWHM CTR by employing a novel scintillation detector configuration and electronic readout. The third is completely new concept for a 511 keV photon detector that probes the modulation of a material's optical properties that results from an ionizing interaction instead of scintillation, which, if successful, could in theory achieve ~1 ps CTR. If successful, these technologies will lead to next generation systems that enhance TOF-PET's ability to visualize and quantify disease
