A Monte Carlo Study of Clinical PET ECAT EXACT HR+ Using GATE

Monte Carlo simulation is an effective tool for the design and development of new systems in nuclear medicine such as Positron emission tomography (PET) in particular. In this work, we used GATE platform (Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission), based on GEANT4 Monte Carlo simulation, to study the Count rate performance and noise equivalent count rate (NECR) values in different activity concentrations corresponding the different coincidence timing windows of 6, 8 and 12 ns of the ECAT EXAT HR+. The ECAT EXACT HR+ validated using NEMA NU 2-2001, the scatter fraction (SF), sensitivity and NECR show a good agreement with experimental value. The obtained results show that the minimizing time coincidence windows increase the NECR by 38 % and True count rate performance by 15 %.