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The Eplus-260 primate PET is an animal PET imaging system developed by the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is designed to image non-human primates, especially the brain of large non-human primates. The system consists of 48 block detectors arranged in two 24-sided rings with a ring diameter of 263 mm and an axial extent of 64 mm. Each block detector is composed of a 16 × 16 cerium-doped lutetium-yttrium orthosilicate crystal array with a pixel size of 1.9 × 1.9 × 10 mm3. This article presents a performance evaluation of the PET scanner according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association NU-4 2008 standards. All measurements were made for an energy window of 360-660 keV and a coincidence timing window of 2 ns. In terms of the FWHM, the FBP reconstructed spatial resolution results in all three directions at the radial position of 5 mm were better than or approached to 2 mm, and remained below 3.0 mm within the central 5 cm diameter of the FOV. The peak absolute sensitivity of the scanner was measured 1.80%. For a monkey-sized phantom, the scatter fraction was 34.2% and the peak noise equivalent count rate (NECR) was 26.5 kcps at 64.3 kBq/cc. The overall imaging capabilities of the scanner were also assessed using in vivo imaging study of a rhesus macaque. The performance measurements demonstrate that the Eplus-260 primate PET scanner has the potential ability to obtain good quality and high-contrast images for non-human primates, especially the brain of large non-human primates and could be considered as one technologically advanced dedicated non-human primate PET scanner available today.

This paper presents a coded aperture method to remotely estimate the radioactivity of a source. The activity is estimated from the detected counts and the estimated source location, which is extracted by factoring the effect of aperture magnification. A 6mm thick tungsten-copper alloy coded aperture mask is used to modulate the incoming gamma-rays. The location of point and line sources in all three dimensions was estimated with an accuracy of less than 10% when the source-camera distance was about 4 m. The estimated activities were 17.6% smaller and 50.4% larger than the actual activities for the point and line sources, respectively.

Positional single photon incidence response (P-SPIR) theory is researched in this paper to generate more accurate PSF-contained system matrix simply and quickly. The method has been proved highly effective to improve the spatial resolution by applying to the Eplus-260 primate PET designed by the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(IHEP). Simultaneously, to meet the clinical needs, GPU acceleration is put to use. Basically, P-SPIR theory takes both incidence angle and incidence position by crystal subdivision instead of only incidence angle into consideration based on Geant4 Application for Emission Tomography (GATE). The simulation conforms to the actual response distribution and can be completed rapidly within less than 1s. Furthermore,two-block penetration and normalization of the response probability are raised to fit the reality. With PSF obtained, the homogenization model is analyzed to calculate the spread distribution of bins within a few minutes for system matrix generation. As a reult, The images reconstructed indicate that the P-SPIR method can effectively inhibit the depth of interaction (DOI) effect especially in the field close to the edge of the field of view (FOV). What is more, the method can be promoted to any other PET and the list-mode organization structure high-speedily and efficiently, which substantially reduces the computing cost and ensures the accuracy of system matrix for PET reconstruction., Comment: 6 pages,12 figures

Respiratory motion is a major factor that affects the quality of PET images of the thoracic area. The diaphragm moves about 15–20 mm due to respiratory motion, which substantially degrades the effective spatial resolution of PET. In this paper, a gated acquisition method is used to correct the motion effects. In this method, an improved demons algorithm is proposed to align the gated images. The experimental results show that the quality of PET images is significantly improved when using our improved method and the proposed method has a faster convergence rate than the original demons algorithm.

Geometric calibration is critical to the accurate SPECT reconstruction. In this paper, a geometric calibration method was developed for a dedicated breast SPECT system with a tilted parallel beam (TPB) orbit. The acquisition geometry of the breast SPECT was firstly characterized. And then its projection model was established based on the acquisition geometry. Finally, the calibration results were obtained using a nonlinear optimization method that fitted the measured projections to the model. Monte Carlo data of the breast SPECT were used to verify the calibration method. Simulation results showed that the geometric parameters with reasonable accuracy could be obtained by the proposed method.

A PET module that comprises a pair of compact, high-resolution and large-area detectors based on silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) was developed and evaluated. The detector's effective area was 24 mm x 24 mm. LYSO crystals measuring 1.9 mm x 1.9 mm x 10 mm and charge division circuit were employed to obtain high spatial resolution with relatively concise Front-end electronics (FEE). Initial results showed the detector to be compatible with 1.5 T magnetic fields. The system's intrinsic FWHM spatial resolution is 1.50 mm. The average energy resolution is 18.5% and the coincidence timing resolution is 2.6 ns. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In fully three-dimensional (3D) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, the scatter fraction (SF) is about 40%-60%, which may degrade the imaging quality severely. Scatter correction is important for high quality image reconstruction. Model-based scatter correction has been proved to be accurate and available in clinical PET. However, it does not correct the scatter from out of the field of view (OFOV) and multiple scatters. In this study, we demonstrate the radial and axial distribution of scatters from OFOV when the source is located in different radial positions. In order to apply the above conclusions to different PET systems, we characterize the scatters from OFOV as a function of the ratio of the scanner diameter to the length of the axial field of view (AFOV) by modeling several typical whole-body and micro PET systems. The proportions of true events (S0–0), single scatter of one photon (S1–0), single scatter of both photons (S1–1), double scatter of one photon (S2–0) and multiple scatter (Sm) are also calculated and compared. Here the 3D-PET Monte Carlo simulations are performed with the Geant4 Application for Tomography Emission (GATE). In summary, the scatters from OFOV tend to be recorded on the lines of response (LOR) far away from the source. They have a much more serious impact on whole-body PET than micro PET depending on the ratio of scanner diameter to the length of AFOV. In whole-body PET, twice scatters including single scatter of both photons (S1–1) and double scatter of one photon (S2–0) add up to about 12% so that twice scatter correction must be taken into account to acquire a high quality reconstruction image.

A method has been developed to establish the crystal position look-up table for positron emission tomography with block detectors. It is based on the principle that the counts in crystal position histogram obey the Gaussian mixture model (GMM). This method has taken full consideration of the characteristics of the GMM and the detector itself. The experimental results have proved that it is simple, reliable, and universal.

A depth discrimination method is devised based on a multirow linear array detector for push-broom Compton scatter imaging. Two or more rows of detector modules are placed at different positions towards a sample. An improved parallel-hole collimator is fixed in front of the modules to restrict their fields of view. The depth information could be indicated by comparing the signal differences. In addition, an available detector and several related simulations using GEANT4 are given to support the method well.

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a radiotracer imaging technique, which permits the in vivo quantitative measurement of biological processes non-invasively. The science and technology behind PET involves radiotracing and tomography. In the process of PET imaging, the compound labeled with a positron-emitting isotope is injected into body. The isotope-labeled compound joins a biological process in the body. Meanwhile, the positron-emitting isotope decays and emits a positron. The positron will lose energy through interactions with the surrounding tissue and then annihilate it with an electron. The annihilated positron and electron will transform into two gamma photons with an energy of 511 keV, which will travel apart in opposite directions. PET detects these gamma photon pairs in the coincidence mode and reconstructs them in the tomographic image which reflects the original distribution of the radio-isotope in the body. From the distribution of the radio-isotope, we can infer the distribution of the radio-isotope labeled compound in the body and obtain the related biological information in the body.

A point spread function (PSF) for the blurring component in positron emission tomography (PET) is studied. The PSF matrix is derived from the single photon incidence response function. A statistical iterative reconstruction (IR) method based on the system matrix containing the PSF is developed. More specifically, the gamma photon incidence upon a crystal array is simulated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulation, and then the single photon incidence response functions are calculated. Subsequently, the single photon incidence response functions are used to compute the coincidence blurring factor according to the physical process of PET coincidence detection. Through weighting the ordinary system matrix response by the coincidence blurring factors, the IR system matrix containing the PSF is finally established. By using this system matrix, the image is reconstructed by an ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM) algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed system matrix can substantially improve the image radial resolution, contrast, and noise property. Furthermore, the simulated single gamma-ray incidence response function depends only on the crystal configuration, so the method could be extended to any PET scanner with the same detector crystal configuration.

Accurate attenuation correction is required in dedicated breast PET imaging systems for image artifact removal and quantitative studies. In this study, a method using only emission data based on consistency conditions is proposed for attenuation correction in breast PET imaging systems. The consistency conditions are exploited to evaluate the accuracy of the estimated attenuation distribution and find the appropriate parameters that yield the most consistent attenuation distribution with the measured emission data. We have proved the validity of the method with experimental investigations and single-patient studies using a dedicated breast PET. The results show that the method is capable of accurately estimating the attenuation distribution of a uniform attenuator from the experimental data with various relatively low activities. The results also show that in single-patient studies, the method is robust for the irregular boundary of breast tissue and provides a distinct improvement in image quality.