A study of the parameters affecting minimum detectable activity concentration level of clinical LSO PET scanners

— Recent studies in the field of molecular imaging have demonstrated the need for PET probes capable of imaging very weak activity distributions. Over this range of applications the sensitivity and the energy resolution of a PET system can be critical, as it can possibly affect the minimum amount of activity which can be reliably detected. Clinical PET systems, as opposed to small animal systems, are less sensitive and, therefore, imaging of very low activity sources could be challenging. Moreover the presence of LSO crystal detectors can further raise the minimum detection threshold due to the intrinsic radioactivity of the 176 Lu contained in the LSO compound. Our aim is to examine the feasibility of using an LSO-based clinical PET scanner for imaging activity distributions of 4nCi/mm3 or less. In this study the parameter of minimum detectable activity (MDA) has been used for the quantification of the detection threshold of a system. A series of acquisitions was simulated using the...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: BIBE
• Authors: Nicolas A. Karakatsanis, Konstantina S. Nikita
• Keywords: Activity Distributions, BIBE 2008, Bioinformatics, Clinical Pet, LSO Background