Simulation of novel scintillator crystals for brain PET

Abstract

In the last decade, different positron emission tomography (PET) crystals have been proposed for brain PET detectors. Brain PET cameras with restricted field of view to a smaller size to cover the brain can both exhibit significantly higher performance and lower the cost when compared to conventional whole-body PET scanners. The existing designs based on scintillation crystals employ the most commonly known materials such as lutetium oxyorthosilicate and bismuth germanate. This is due to their relatively good parameters such as high light yield and density. The main drawback of using scintillation crystals is that they have a modest energy resolution. In this study, a brain PET scanner was designed and simulated using a Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission (GATE) toolkit. The performances of five crystals, namely strontium hafnate, gadolinium aluminium gallium garnet, gadolinium yttrium gallium aluminium garnet, gadolinium lutetium gallium aluminium garnet, and lutetium oxyorthosilicate for comparison, were evaluated in terms of sensitivity, spatial resolution, and count rate. The performance evaluation results showed that among the suggested scintillators, strontium hafnate can be considered as a promising alternative detector for high performance brain PET systems. K: Gamma camera, SPECT, PET PET/CT, coronary CT angiography (CTA); Medicalimage reconstruction methods and algorithms, computer-aided diagnosis; Medical-image reconstruction methods and algorithms, computer-aided software; Scintillators, scintillation and light emission processes (solid, gas and liquid scintillators) 1Corresponding author.

The detection instrumentation and geometric design of clinical PET scanner: towards better performance and broader clinical applications

“…The development of this material is less costly than that of the crystals previously studied. All these features make it an exciting and promising alternative PET detector [187]. With this cost reduction, it could play an essential role in selecting a suitable scintillator material for a PET TB system.…”

Evaluation of new scintillation crystals with MCDM methods for brain PET

“…In this study, five scintillating crystals were simulated: they all have distinct properties, and are appropriate for use either in medical imaging, research or as radiation detectors. We have given a concise description of these crystals in our previous study [8].…”

“…This is due to the demand of crystals that can support ultra-high-resolution imaging. In a previous study [8], we simulated some new scintillating crystals, hence, the need to evaluate them using advanced computational techniques. The crystals included in this study were, strontium hafnate (SHO), Cerium-doped gadolinium aluminum gallium garget (GAGG), Cerium-doped gadolinium yttrium gallium aluminum garget (GYGAG), and Cerium-doped gadolinium lutetium gallium aluminum garget (GLuGAG).…”

Optical and radioluminescence properties of Pr-doped BaTi4O9 crystals synthesized by the floating zone method

“…Scintillators are a kind of phosphor, and they have a function to immediately convert incident ionizing radiation into lowenergy photons. [1][2][3][4] Scintillators have been used with photodetectors in various fields such as medical, 5,6) security 7,8) and environmental monitoring. 9) The required properties of scintillators for use in ionizing radiation detectors are a high light yield, fast decay time, radiation detection efficiency and low afterglow.…”