PhenoPET — results from the plant scanner

Within the German Plant Phenotyping Network (DPPN), we developed a novel PET scanner based on Philips Digital Photon Counters (DPCs, or dSiPMs = digital Silicon Photomultipliers). The scanner is dedicated for plant research and provides functional information on carbon transport within the plant. To this end the detector ring is oriented horizontally. It provides a Field-of-View of 18 cm dia. and 20 cm in height. The read-out electronics cluster hits from different photodetector pixels when they originate from the same scintillation event. These single events are written via USB 3.0 with up to 300 MB/s to the computer system. Crystal identification, energy discrimination and coincidence detection is realized in software. The spatial resolution in the center Field-of-View (CFOV) could be estimated to approx. 1.6 mm from measurements of a dedicated hot rod phantom. Preliminary sensitivity measurements result in a peak sensitivity of 4.04% (ΔE = 250-750 keV) in the CFOV and a Coincidence Resolving Time of 298 ps could be achieved.