Simulating NEMA characteristics of the modular total-body J-PET scanner—an economic total-body PET from plastic scintillators

Abstract

The purpose of the presented research is estimation of the performance characteristics of the economic total-body Jagiellonian-PET system (TB-J-PET) constructed from plastic scintillators. The characteristics are estimated according to the NEMA NU-2-2018 standards utilizing the GATE package. The simulated detector consists of 24 modules, each built out of 32 plastic scintillator strips (each with cross section of 6 mm times 30 mm and length of 140 or 200 cm) arranged in two layers in regular 24-sided polygon circumscribing a circle with the diameter of 78.6 cm. For the TB-J-PET with an axial field-of-view (AFOV) of 200 cm, a spatial resolutions (SRs) of 3.7 mm (transversal) and 4.9 mm (axial) are achieved. The noise equivalent count rate (NECR) peak of 630 kcps is expected at 30 kBq cc −1 . Activity concentration and the sensitivity at the center amounts to 38 cps kBq −1 . The scatter fraction (SF) is estimated to 36.2 %. The values of SF and SR are comparable to those obtained for the state-of-the-art clinical PET scanners and the first total-body tomographs: uExplorer and PennPET. With respect to the standard PET systems with AFOV in the range from 16 to 26 cm, the TB-J-PET is characterized by an increase in NECR approximately by factor of 4 and by the increase of the whole-body sensitivity by factor of 12.6 to 38. The time-of-flight resolution for the TB-J-PET is expected to be at the level of CRT = 240 ps full width at half maximum. For the TB-J-PET with an AFOV of 140 cm, an image quality of the reconstructed images of a NEMA IEC phantom was presented with a contrast recovery coefficient and a background variability parameters. The increase of the whole-body sensitivity and NECR estimated for the TB-J-PET with respect to current commercial PET systems makes the TB-J-PET a promising cost-effective solution for the broad clinical applications of total-body PET scanners. TB-J-PET may constitute an economic alternative for the crystal TB-PET scanners, since plastic scintillators are much cheaper than BGO or LYSO crystals and axial arrangement of the strips significantly reduces the costs of readout electronics and SiPMs.

Radiovesicolomics-new approach in medical imaging

“…The main advantage of nuclear imaging is ability to obtain 3D whole body images ( Khan and de Rosales, 2021 ; Lázaro-Ibáñez et al, 2021 ). Notably, recently a new generation of PET scanners was introduced enabling dynamic and kinetic model based imaging of all tissues and organs simultaneously ( Badawi et al, 2019 ; Karp et al, 2020 ; Moskal et al, 2021c ; Moskal and Stępień, E. Ł. 2020 ; Prenosil et al, 2022 ; Spencer et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Depending on imaging radionuclides and the detection system, the applied dose can vary from 37 kBq ( 125 I-biotin) ( Matsumoto et al, 2017 ) to 5–10 MBq ([ 111 In]DTPA) ( Lázaro-Ibáñez et al, 2021 ), 7 MBq ( 64 Cu-NOTA) ( Banerjee et al, 2019 ), 3.7 MBq ( 99m Tc) ( Son et al, 2020 ), 2 MBq ( 64 Cu-NOTA) ( Shi et al, 2019 ), and 0.2–1 89 Zr-PANC1 ( Khan et al, 2022 ) to track/image EVs using either SPECT or PET in a mouse. Radiovesicolomics may benefit also from the new multi-photon PET scanners ( Moskal et al, 2020 ; Moskal et al, 2021a ; Moskal et al, 2021b ; Moskal et al, 2021c ) which enable simultaneous multi-tracer imaging ( Moskal and Stępień, 2022 ) and hence studying simultaneously the kinetics of two different types of EVs by marking them with different isotopes.…”

Decoherence puzzle in measurements of photons originating from electron-positron annihilation

“…The Jagiellonian Positron Emission Tomograph (J-PET ) is the first tomograph based on the idea of using long strips of plastic scintillators instead of crystal scintillators [24,25,26]. Plastic scintillators are mainly composed of hydrocarbons, so the predom-inant medium for the interaction of photons within the scintillator is Compton scattering [3].…”

“…Plastic scintillators are mainly composed of hydrocarbons, so the predom-inant medium for the interaction of photons within the scintillator is Compton scattering [3]. J-PET is designed and constructed as a multi-photon positron emission tomography scanner [27,28] capable of (i) standard PET imaging [26,29], and (ii) newly invented positronium imaging [30,31,32,33,34,35,36]. For the planned measurement, we propose to use the 3-layer prototype of J-PET, which consists of plastic scintillators of length 50 × 1.9 × 0.7 cm 3 read out at both ends by vacuum photomultipliers (see Fig.…”

Testing CPT symmetry in ortho-positronium decays with J-PET detector

“…This detector comprises 24 modules of 13 densely-packed plastic scintillator strips equipped with silicon photomultiplier readout and fully digital front-end electronics and data acquisition provinding improved time resolution for 𝛾 interactions. The modules can be arranged into multiple configurations including multi-and single layer [17]. Monte Carlo simulations of the entire experiment using different detector arrangements were conducted in order to select the best tradeoff between single photon recording probability (enhanced in multi-layer setups) and amount of background from secondary Compton-scattered photons which is more likely recorded between multiple detector layers.…”