Development of the Thin TOF-PET scanner based on fast monolithic silicon pixel sensors

摘要

The Thin-TOF PET (TT-PET) project aims at the construction of a small-animal PET scanner based on silicon monolithic pixel sensors with 30 ps time resolution for 511 ke V photons, equivalent to 100 ps time resolution for minimum ionizing particles. Iterative image reconstruction on Monte-Carlo simulation shows that the scanner can produce high signal-to-noise ratio images with good spatial resolution throughout the whole field of view. The demonstrator chip, comprising a 3 × 10 pixel matrix and a 50 ps binning TDC, was tested at the CERN SPS beam test facility. The demonstrator shows an efficiency greater than 99.9% and a time resolution for minimum ionizing particles of approximately 110ps.