Scintillators

Data-Driven Patient Motion Compensation in Cardiac Positron Emission Tomography

“…13 The effect of these intermediate energy levels is to reduce the emission energy of the de-exciting electron such that it falls within the visible range. 23 Several of the most commonly used scintillation materials within PET systems are sodium iodide doped with thallium (NaI(Tl)), bismuth germanate (Bi4Ge3O12, or BGO), and lutetium oxyorthosilicate doped with cerium (Lu2(SiO4)O, or LSO). 22 Several important physical properties of these scintillators are provided in Table 1.1.…”

“…Short rise and decay times are ideal as they result in quick signal pulses 13 which enhances the detector's capacity to distinguish events that take place in rapid succession. 23 In general, inorganic scintillators exhibit long decay times but LSO demonstrates a remarkable improvement in decay time over others like NaI(Tl) and…”

“…Z is the atomic number of an atom in the scintillator 23. More generally, increased effective atomic number and density within a polyatomic scintillator leads to increased intrinsic detection efficiency and thus scanner sensitivity.Table 1.2 Performance measurements of the GE Discovery 690 PET system 27.…”