Flexible and modular PET: Evaluating the potential of TOF‐DOI panel detectors

作者：Gašper Razdevšek, Georges El Fakhri, Thibault Marin, R. Dolenec, Matic Orehar, Yanis Chemli, A. Gola, D. Gascón, Stan Majewski, R. Pestotnik · 发表于：Medical Physics · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1002/mp.17741 · 被引用次数：10 · 研究领域：Radiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies、Medical Imaging Techniques and Applications、Particle Detector Development and Performance

Abstract Background Panel detectors have the potential to provide a flexible, modular approach to Positron Emission Tomography (PET), enabling customization to meet patient‐specific needs and scan objectives. The panel design allows detectors to be positioned close to the patient, aiming to enhance sensitivity and spatial resolution through improved geometric coverage and reduced noncollinearity blurring. Parallax error can be mitigated using depth of interaction (DOI) information. Purpose One of the key questions the article addresses is: Do panel detectors offer viable clinical imaging capabilities, or does limited angular sampling restrict their utility by causing image distortions and artifacts? Additionally, this article explores the scalability of panel detectors for constructing scanners with a long axial field of view (LAFOV). Methods Monte Carlo simulations using GATE software were used to assess the performance of panel detectors with various DOI resolutions and Time‐of‐Flight (TOF) resolutions as fine as 70 ps. The 30 30 cm panels comprised pixelated 3 3 20 mm LSO crystals. Simulations were run on large high‐performance computing clusters (122,000 CPU cores). Open‐source CASToR software was used for (TOF MLEM) image reconstruction. The image quality of the scanners was assessed using a range of phantoms (NEMA, Derenzo, XCAT, and a high‐resolution brain phantom). The Siemens Biograph Vision PET/CT scanner served as the reference model. The performance of larger 120 ...