Speaker
Description
For the single-ended readout positron emission tomography (PET) detectors, the simplest method for determining depth-of-interaction (DOI) is based on the ratio of the photodetector signal of the corresponding crystal to the overall detector signal by placing a light guide on top of the detector. However, as the coupling ratio between the crystal and the photodetector increases in pursuit of higher resolution, the effectiveness of this method gradually deteriorates. This paper proposes a new DOI encoding algorithm by exploring the ratio of the combination of the top three signals to the overall detector signal, where the weighting coefficients for the signal combination are optimized through mathematical derivation. The proposed new method was applied to our single-ended row-column summation readout PET detector with 9:1 coupling ratio. The experimental test results show that the new algorithm enables uniform DOI resolution across crystals, achieving an average DOI resolution of 4.07 mm Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM) with 12.1% improvement over the traditional method. Since the new algorithm can largely improve the DOI determination without any hardware changes, it retains the advantages of simplicity and cost-effectiveness of the single-ended row-column summation readout PET detectors, even for pursuing high position resolution with high coupling ratios.
| Minioral | Yes |
|---|---|
| IEEE Member | No |
| Are you a student? | Yes |