Advances in positron tomography for oncology.
Development of PET instrumentation over the past 42 years has moved from simple dual-detector coincidence scanners, to proposed systems having 60,000 detectors and simultaneous coverage of 15-cm regions of the body with spatial resolutions better than 4 mm. The principal determinants of positron emission tomography (PET) instrumentation advances are positron range, noncollinearity of the annihilation photons, scattering, random event rates, detector size, efficiency, speed and light output; capability to correct for depth of crystal interaction, attenuation compensation, axial coverage, and rapid data analysis and presentation. While general-purpose systems with 2-mm resolution are expected, special-purpose PET devices are being built for breast and brain tumor studies with resolutions from 1.7 to 5 mm.
Budinger
T F
TF
Center for Functional Imaging, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Brennan
K M
KM
Moses
W W
WW
Derenzo
S E
SE
D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*