Instrumentation for positron emission tomography.
Positron emission tomography with a spatial resolution of 2 mm full width at half maximum for quantitation in regions of interest 4 mm in diameter will become possible with the development of detectors that achieve ultrahigh resolution. Improved resolution will be possible using solid-state photodetectors for crystal identification or photomultiplier tubes with many small electron multipliers . Temporal resolution of 2 seconds and gating of cyclic events can be accomplished if statistical requirements are met. The major physical considerations in achieving high-resolution positron emission tomography are the degradation in resolution resulting from positron range, emission angle, parallax error, detector sampling density, the sensitivity of various detector materials and packing schemes, and the trade off between temporal resolution and statistical accuracy. The accuracy of data required for physiological models depends primarily on the fidelity of spatial sampling independent of statistical constraints.
D006801:Humans; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods