Initial performance studies of a wearable brain positron emission tomography camera based on autonomous thin-film digital Geiger avalanche photodiode arrays

Charles R. Schmidtlein; James N. Turner; Michael O. Thompson; Krishna C. Mandal; Ida Häggström; Jiahan Zhang; John L. Humm; David H. Feiglin; Andrzej Krol

doi:10.1117/1.JMI.4.1.011003

22 November 2016 Initial performance studies of a wearable brain positron emission tomography camera based on autonomous thin-film digital Geiger avalanche photodiode arrays

Charles R. Schmidtlein, James N. Turner, Michael O. Thompson, Krishna C. Mandal, Ida Häggström, Jiahan Zhang, John L. Humm, David H. Feiglin, Andrzej Krol

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Medical Imaging, Vol. 4, Issue 1, 011003 (November 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.4.1.011003

Abstract

Using analytical and Monte Carlo modeling, we explored performance of a lightweight wearable helmet-shaped brain positron emission tomography (PET), or BET camera, based on thin-film digital Geiger avalanche photodiode arrays with Lutetium-yttrium oxyorthosilicate (LYSO) or LaBr₃ scintillators for imaging in vivo human brain function of freely moving and acting subjects. We investigated a spherical cap BET and cylindrical brain PET (CYL) geometries with 250-mm diameter. We also considered a clinical whole-body (WB) LYSO PET/CT scanner. The simulated energy resolutions were 10.8% (LYSO) and 3.3% (LaBr₃), and the coincidence window was set at 2 ns. The brain was simulated as a water sphere of uniform F-18 activity with a radius of 100 mm. We found that BET achieved >40% better noise equivalent count (NEC) performance relative to the CYL and >800% than WB. For 10-mm-thick LaBr₃ equivalent mass systems, LYSO (7-mm thick) had ∼40% higher NEC than LaBr₃. We found that 1×1×3 mm scintillator crystals achieved ∼1.1 mm full-width-half-maximum spatial resolution without parallax errors. Additionally, our simulations showed that LYSO generally outperformed LaBr₃ for NEC unless the timing resolution for LaBr₃ was considerably smaller than that presently used for LYSO, i.e., well below 300 ps.

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Charles R. Schmidtlein, James N. Turner, Michael O. Thompson, Krishna C. Mandal, Ida Häggström, Jiahan Zhang, John L. Humm, David H. Feiglin, and Andrzej Krol "Initial performance studies of a wearable brain positron emission tomography camera based on autonomous thin-film digital Geiger avalanche photodiode arrays," Journal of Medical Imaging 4(1), 011003 (22 November 2016). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.4.1.011003

Published: 22 November 2016

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