Medical imaging is a fundamental tool in the diagnosis, treatments, and monitoring of disease processes as cancer. Detectors of large area and high Field Of View are necessary to scan the whole body in a reasonable time. Relatively large area photodetectors are necessary even for imaging of small mice and rats with high sensitivities and spatial resolutions, generally obtained by using pinhole or multipinhole collimators. Standard PET scanners, with scintillators coupled to photomultipliers, have generally a limited detector area due to the high costs of both scintillators and photomultipliers. In this respect, the replacement of photomultipliers with gaseous photodetectors represents a possible solution of the problem and brings the additional advantage to provide devices with sensitive areas free from dead regions. In this paper we report on a PET scanner equipped with a multiwire proportional chamber with a CsI thin film as photoconverter. A similar approach has already been successfully pursued in nuclear and particle physics experiments. A prototype of such a PET detector has been designed and built, and will be tested soon. Possible solutions for increasing the photoelectron number, and thus the detector performance, are presented. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
A PET scanner employing CsI films as photocathode
DE LEO, Raffaele;
2004-01-01
Abstract
Medical imaging is a fundamental tool in the diagnosis, treatments, and monitoring of disease processes as cancer. Detectors of large area and high Field Of View are necessary to scan the whole body in a reasonable time. Relatively large area photodetectors are necessary even for imaging of small mice and rats with high sensitivities and spatial resolutions, generally obtained by using pinhole or multipinhole collimators. Standard PET scanners, with scintillators coupled to photomultipliers, have generally a limited detector area due to the high costs of both scintillators and photomultipliers. In this respect, the replacement of photomultipliers with gaseous photodetectors represents a possible solution of the problem and brings the additional advantage to provide devices with sensitive areas free from dead regions. In this paper we report on a PET scanner equipped with a multiwire proportional chamber with a CsI thin film as photoconverter. A similar approach has already been successfully pursued in nuclear and particle physics experiments. A prototype of such a PET detector has been designed and built, and will be tested soon. Possible solutions for increasing the photoelectron number, and thus the detector performance, are presented. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
