The fundamental limits of spatial resolution in positron emission tomography (PET) have been understood for many years. The physical size of the detector element usually plays the dominant role in determining resolution, but the combined contributions from acollinearity, positron range, penetration into the detector ring, and decoding errors in the detector modules often combine to be of similar size. In addition, the sampling geometry and statistical noise further degrade the effective resolution. This paper describes quantitatively describes these effects, discusses potential methods for reducing the magnitude of these effects, and computes the ultimately achievable spatial resolution for clinical and pre-clinical PET cameras.
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