The OpenPET geometry is our new idea to visualize a physically opened space between two detector rings. In this paper, we developed the first small prototype to show a proof-of-concept of OpenPET imaging. Two detector rings of 110 mm diameter and 42 mm axial length were placed with a gap of 42 mm. The basic imaging performance was confirmed through phantom studies; the open imaging was realized at the cost of slight loss of axial resolution and 24% loss of sensitivity. For a proof-of-concept of PET image-guided radiation therapy, we carried out the in-beam tests with (11)C radioactive beam irradiation in the heavy ion medical accelerator in Chiba to visualize in situ distribution of primary particles stopped in a phantom. We showed that PET images corresponding to dose distribution were obtained. For an initial proof-of-concept of real-time multimodal imaging, we measured a tumor-inoculated mouse with (18)F-FDG, and an optical image of the mouse body surface was taken during the PET measurement by inserting a digital camera in the ring gap. We confirmed that the tumor in the gap was clearly visualized. The result also showed the extension effect of an axial field-of-view (FOV); a large axial FOV of 126 mm was obtained with the detectors that originally covered only an 84 mm axial FOV. In conclusion, our initial imaging studies showed promising performance of the OpenPET.

The long patient port of a PET scanner tends to put stress on patients, especially patients with claustrophobia. It also prevents doctors and technicians from taking care of patients during scanning. In this paper, we proposed an 'open PET' geometry, which consists of two axially separated detector rings. A long and continuous field-of-view (FOV) including a 360 degrees opened gap between two detector rings can be imaged enabling a fully 3D image reconstruction of all the possible lines-of-response. The open PET will become practical if iterative image reconstruction methods are applied even though image reconstruction of the open PET is analytically an incomplete problem. First we implemented a 'masked' 3D ordered subset expectation maximization (OS-EM) in which the system matrix was obtained from a long 'gapless' scanner by applying a mask to detectors corresponding to the open space. Next, in order to evaluate imaging performance of the proposed open PET geometry, we simulated a dual HR+ scanner (ring diameter of D = 827 mm, axial length of W = 154 mm x 2) separated by a variable gap. The gap W was the maximum limit to have axially continuous FOV of 3W though the maximum diameter of FOV at the central slice was limited to D/2. Artifacts, observed on both sides of the open space when the gap exceeded W, were effectively reduced by inserting detectors partially into unnecessary open spaces. We also tested the open PET geometry using experimental data obtained by the jPET-D4. The jPET-D4 is a prototype brain scanner, which has 5 rings of 24 detector blocks. We simulated the open jPET-D4 with a gap of 66 mm by eliminating 1 block-ring from experimental data. Although some artifacts were seen at both ends of the opened gap, very similar images were obtained with and without the gap. The proposed open PET geometry is expected to lead to realization of in-beam PET, which is a method for an in situ monitoring of charged particle therapy, by letting the beams pass through the gap. The proposed open PET geometry will also allow simultaneous PET/CT measurements of the same PET FOV as the CT FOV, in contrast to the conventional PET/CT where each FOV is separated by several tens of centimeters.

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We are developing a novel, general purpose isotropic-3D PET detector X'tal cube which has high spatial resolution in all three dimensions. The research challenge for this detector is implementing effective detection of scintillation photons by covering six faces of a segmented crystal block with silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). In this paper, we developed the second prototype of the X'tal cube for a proof-of-concept. We aimed at realizing an ultimate detector with 1.0 mm(3) cubic crystals, in contrast to our previous development using 3.0 mm(3) cubic crystals. The crystal block was composed of a 16 × 16 × 16 array of lutetium gadolinium oxyorthosilicate (LGSO) crystals 0.993 × 0.993 × 0.993 mm(3) in size. The crystals were optically glued together without inserting any reflector inside and 96 multi-pixel photon counters (MPPCs, S10931-50P, i.e. six faces each with a 4 × 4 array of MPPCs), each having a sensitive area of 3.0 × 3.0 mm(2), were optically coupled to the surfaces of the crystal block. Almost all 4096 crystals were identified through Anger-type calculation due to the finely adjusted reflector sheets inserted between the crystal block and light guides. The reflector sheets, which formed a belt of 0.5 mm width, were placed to cover half of the crystals of the second rows from the edges in order to improve identification performance of the crystals near the edges. Energy resolution of 12.7% was obtained at 511 keV with almost uniform light output for all crystal segments thanks to the effective detection of the scintillation photons.