A PET Design Based on SiPM and Monolithic LYSO Crystals: Performance Evaluation

A new small animal PET based on SiPM and monolithic LYSO crystals has been developed. Eight detector modules form the PET ring, each mounting an array of 12 x 12 SiPMs coupled to a readout providing the summed signals of the pixels on each of the 12 rows and 12 columns of the SiPM array. This design makes it possible to accurately determine the centroid of the scintillation light distribution with about 1.6 mm full width at half maximum (FWHM) resolution without correction for the 1 mm source size, and the photon depth of interaction (DOI) with nearly 2 mm FWHM. This single ring PET system has a homogeneous spatial resolution across the entire 80 mm transaxial field of view (FOV) of about 1 mm FWHM. The noise equivalent count rate (NECR) peak is estimated to occur at around 39.2 MBq with a rate of approximately 82.7 kcps for the mouse-like phantom and 22 kcps at 48.1 MBq for the rat-like phantom. Following the NEMA protocol, the peak absolute sensitivity in the center of the FOV is 2.8% for a 30% peak energy window. A pilot test injecting NaF to a mouse of 20 grams is also presented. Finally, the PET ring has been tested in front of a high field 15.2 T Magnetic Resonance (MR). No significant variation on energy and spatial resolution across the FOV has been observed due to the presence of the magnetic field.