title: Use of a magnetic field to increase the spatial resolution of positron emission tomography.
abstract: Detector geometry, spatial sampling, and more fundamentally, positron range and noncollinearity of annihilation photon emission define Positron Emission Tomography (PET) spatial resolution. In this paper, a strong magnetic field is used to constrain positron travel transverse to the field. Measurement of the spread function from a 500 microns diameter 68Ga impregnated resin bead shows a squeezing of the full width at half maximum (FWHM) by a factor of 1.0, 1.22, 1.42, and 2.05, at 0, 4.0, 5.0, and 9.4 Tesla, respectively. The full width at tenth maximum (FWTM) decreases by a factor of 1.0, 1.73, 2.09, and 3.20, at 0, 4.0, 5.0, and 9.0 Tesla, respectively. Acquiring a PET image in a magnetic field should significantly reduce resolution loss due to positron range.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455.
authors.forename: B E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Hammer
authors.forename: N L
authors.initials: NL
authors.lastname: Christensen
authors.forename: B G
authors.initials: BG
authors.lastname: Heil
mesh_terms: D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008280:Magnetics; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*