title: Effect of 176Lu background on singles transmission for LSO-based PET cameras.
abstract: We explore how the radioactive background from naturally occurring 176Lu affects single photon transmission imaging for lutetium orthosilicate (LSO) scintillator-based PET cameras by estimating the transmission noise equivalent count rate (NECR) including this background. Assuming a typical PET camera geometry (80 cm detector ring diameter), we use a combination of measurement and analytic computation to estimate the counting rates due to transmission, scatter and background events as a function of singles transmission source strength. We then compute a NECR for singles transmission. We find that the presence of radiation from the naturally occurring 176Lu reduces the NECR by 60% or higher for source strengths less than 10 mCi, and that a 25% reduction of the NECR can occur even with a source strength of 40 mCi.
authors.affiliation: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley 94720, USA.
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Huber
authors.forename: W W
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Moses
authors.forename: W F
authors.initials: WF
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: C C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Watson
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008187:Lutetium; D017785:Photons; D011868:Radioisotopes; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D011868:Radioisotopes; D008187:Lutetium