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Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are now widely used for positron emission tomography (PET) applications because of their high gain and low noise characteristics. The PET image quality has been improved with the advancement of time-of-flight (TOF) and depth-of-interaction (DOI) measurement techniques. For brain-dedicated PET systems, both TOF and DOI information are beneficial for enhancing the reconstructed PET image quality. In a previous study, we proposed SiPM-based dual-ended readout PET detectors that used a mean time method to achieve coincidence timing resolution (CTR) of 349 ps and DOI resolution of 2.9 mm. However, the coincidence timing resolution (CTR) was worse than 300 ps since the crystal surface and the reflector type were not optimized. This study aimed at investigating the optimal crystal surface treatment and the reflector material to achieve a sub-200 ps CTR and sub-3 mm DOI resolution with a dual-ended readout PET detector using an LYSO crystal (2.9 × 2.9 × 20 mm3). The scintillation light inside the LYSO crystal was read out by two SiPMs using the dual-ended readout method. The CTR and DOI resolution were measured with two different crystal surfaces (polished and saw-cut) and three different reflector material scenarios of ESR without grease (i.e., air coupling), ESR with optical grease and Teflon. We digitized the timing and energy signals by using a V775N TDC module (35 ps bit−1) and V965 QDC module, respectively. The combination of the saw-cut LYSO crystal and the ESR with air coupling resulted in the best CTR (188 ± 32 ps) and DOI resolution (2.9 ± 0.2 mm) with the dual-ended readout configuration. We concluded the dual-ended readout method in combination with the saw-cut crystal and the ESR reflector with air coupling can provide a sub-200 ps CTR and sub-3.0 mm DOI resolution simultaneously.

Objective. Small animal positron emission tomography (PET) requires a submillimeter resolution for better quantification of radiopharmaceuticals. On the other hand, depth-of-interaction (DOI) information is essential to preserve the spatial resolution while maintaining the sensitivity. Recently, we developed a staggered 3-layer DOI detector with 1 mm crystal pitch and 15 mm total crystal thickness, but we did not demonstrate the imaging performance of the DOI detector with full ring geometry. In this study we present initial imaging results obtained for a mouse brain PET prototype developed with the staggered 3-layer DOI detector. Approach. The prototype had 53 mm inner diameter and 11 mm axial field-of-view. The PET scanner consisted of 16 DOI detectors each of which had a staggered 3-layer LYSO crystal array (4/4/7 mm) coupled to a 4 × 4 silicon photomultiplier array. The physical performance was evaluated in terms of the NEMA NU 4 2008 protocol. Main Results. The measured spatial resolutions at the center and 15 mm radial offset were 0.67 mm and 1.56 mm for filtered-back-projection, respectively. The peak absolute sensitivity of 0.74% was obtained with an energy window of 400–600 keV. The resolution phantom imaging results show the clear identification of a submillimetric rod pattern with the ordered-subset expectation maximization algorithm. The inter-crystal scatter rejection using a narrow energy window could enhance the resolvability of a 0.75 mm rod significantly. Significance. In an animal imaging experiment, the detailed mouse brain structures such as cortex and thalamus were clearly identified with high contrast. In conclusion, we successfully developed the mouse brain PET insert prototype with a staggered 3-layer DOI detector.

For positron emission tomography (PET) inserts to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications, optical fibers have been used for some time to transfer scintillation photons to photomultiplier tubes positioned outside the fringe magnetic field. We previously proposed a novel utilization of an optical fiber for good radio frequency (RF) transmission from body coils to an imaging object. Optical fiber bundles between silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) and scintillation crystals provide an increased spacing between RF-shielded electronics boxes, facilitating RF passage from the body RF coils to imaging objects. In this paper, we present test results of a SiPM-PET system with a short optical fiber bundle for simultaneous PET-MR imaging. We built the SiPM-PET system which consisted of 12 SiPM-PET modules; each module was assembled with a lutetium yttrium oxyorthosilicatecrystal block, a 31 mm optical fiber bundle, a Hamamatsu multi-pixel photon counter S11064-050P and a signal processing box shielded with copper. The SiPM-PET system, with a face-to-face distance of 71 mm, was placed inside a 3 T MRI. A small surface coil placed inside the SiPM-PET system was used to receive the signal from phantoms while the body RF coil transmitted the RF pulses. The SiPM-PET system showed little performance degradation during the simultaneous PET-MR imaging and it caused no significant degradation of MR images with turbo spin echo (TSE), gradient echo or 3D spoiled gradient recalled sequences. Echo planar imaging MR images with and without the SiPM-PET inside the MR scanner were significantly worse than the images obtained with the TSE sequence.

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