Effect of 176Lu background on singles transmission for LSO-based PET cameras.
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.
Huber
J S
JS
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley 94720, USA.
Moses
W W
WW
Jones
W F
WF
Watson
C C
CC
D006801:Humans; D008187:Lutetium; D017785:Photons; D011868:Radioisotopes; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed / Q000379:methods*
D011868:Radioisotopes; D008187:Lutetium