3D position-sensitive scintillation detectors for a high-resolution loco-regional PET imaging system (Conference Presentation)

We are building a dual-panel positron emission tomography (PET) system prototype that enables focused imaging of local regions of interest of the body with 1 mm3 spatial resolution, The detector panels are built from novel 3D position sensitive scintillation (3DPSS) detectors comprising arrays of 1x1x1 mm3 LYSO scintillation crystal elements coupled to position-sensitive avalanche photodiodes (PSAPD). At the present state of system construction, the measured energy resolution over 98,304 crystal elements coupled to 1,536 PSAPDs is 11.34%, and 76.2% (74,938) of the system LYSO crystal elements are found to have greater than 99% event positioning accuracy. Imaging studies performed with a high-resolution phantom demonstrate resolution of the smallest (1.2 mm diameter) features. Besides enabling 1 mm resolution clinical PET studies, we describe other novel ways we are planning to exploit the 3DPSS detector information.