Design and Evaluation of LYSO/SiPM LIGHTENING PET Detector with DTI Sampling Method

Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET) has a wide range of applications in the treatment and prevention of major diseases owing to its high sensitivity and excellent resolution. However, there is still much room for optimization in the readout circuit and fast pulse sampling to further improve the performance of the PET scanner. In this work, a LIGHTENING® PET detector using a 13 × 13 lutetium-yttrium oxyorthosilicate (LYSO) crystal array read out by a 6 × 6 silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) array was developed. A novel sampling method, referred to as the dual time interval (DTI) method, is therefore proposed to realize digital acquisition of fast scintillation pulse. A semi-cut light guide was designed, which greatly improves the resolution of the edge region of the crystal array. The obtained flood histogram shown that all the 13 × 13 crystal pixels can be clearly discriminated. The optimum operating conditions for the detector were obtained by comparing the flood histogram quality under different experimental conditions. An average energy resolution (FWHM) of 14.3% and coincidence timing resolution (FWHM) of 972 ps were measured. The experimental results demonstrated that the LIGHTENING® PET detector achieves extremely high resolution which is suitable for the development of a high performance time-of-flight PET scanner.

The PETALO project

“…The first prototype of PETALO, PETit, has been built and it is operating at Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC) in Valencia, Spain. We have obtained a very good energy resolution of 5.7% ± 0.6%, which is better than the current energy resolution reached in PET, usually between 10-15% [21,22] and better than other energy resolutions obtained with liquid xenon. However, as the result was corrected by saturation, in order to obtain a final result without saturation, new SiPMs with more microcells are going to be used.…”

“…The SiPMs have high gain and a fast response, which is necessary to obtain a good time resolution and they also present a low dark noise when they are working at cryogenic temperatures. A 22 Na calibration source, which emits positrons, is placed in the middle of the cube, in a port, so that the source is not in contact with the liquid xenon.…”

High resolution detectors for whole-body PET scanners by using dual-ended readout

“…Figure 2 shows the design and a top-view photo of the light guide with grooves, and an illustration of how photon transport in the edge crystals and the light guide improves the identification of edge crystals. At 2 mm from the edges, four grooves of 0.2 mm wide and 0.5 mm deep are raw cut into the light guide and filled with BaSO4 reflector [56,57]. Using the grooves in the light guide, more scintillation photons produced by interactions occurring in the second row (or column) of the crystals are detected by the second row (or column) of the SiPMs, and more scintillation photons produced by interactions occurring in the first row (or column) of the crystals are detected by the first row (or column) of the SiPMs.…”

Comparative Study on Characteristics of Partial Discharge Optical Pulse and UHF Pulse in Switch Equipment

“…With the development of silicon optoelectronic semiconductor technology, Silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) with single photon efficiency, high gain, and long life are becoming mature and are increasingly used in laser radar (LiDar) [4] and Positron Emission Computed Tomography (PET) [5], low-light imaging [6] and other fields. Due to its small size, anti-interference, low cost and many other advantages, it can replace traditional external field effect optoelectronic devices, such as photomultiplier tubes (PMT), and are used in many industrial fields.…”