Effects of multiple-interaction photon events in a high-resolution PET system that uses 3-D positioning detectors

摘要

Purpose: The authors’ laboratory is developing a dual-panel, breast-dedicated PET system. The detector panels are built from dual-LSO-position-sensitive avalanche photodiode (PSAPD) modules—units holding two 8×8 arrays of 1 mm3 LSO crystals, where each array is coupled to a PSAPD. When stacked to form an imaging volume, these modules are capable of recording the 3-D coordinates of individual interactions of a multiple-interaction photon event (MIPE). The small size of the scintillation crystal elements used increases the likelihood of photon scattering between crystal arrays. In this article, the authors investigate how MIPEs impact the system photon sensitivity, the data acquisition scheme, and the quality and quantitative accuracy of reconstructed PET images.