title: First characterization of a digital SiPM based time-of-flight PET detector with 1 mm spatial resolution.
abstract: Monolithic scintillator detectors can offer a combination of spatial resolution, energy resolution, timing performance, depth-of-interaction information, and detection efficiency that make this type of detector a promising candidate for application in clinical, time-of-flight (TOF) positron emission tomography (PET). In such detectors the scintillation light is distributed over a relatively large number of photosensor pixels and the light intensity per pixel can be relatively low. Therefore, monolithic scintillator detectors are expected to benefit from the low readout noise offered by a novel photosensor called the digital silicon photomultiplier (dSiPM). Here, we present a first experimental characterization of a TOF PET detector comprising a 24 × 24 × 10 mm(3) LSO:Ce,0.2%Ca scintillator read out by a dSiPM array (DPC-6400-44-22) developed by Philips Digital Photon Counting. A spatial resolution of ~1 mm full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) averaged over the entire crystal was obtained (varying from just below 1 mm FWHM in the detector center to ~1.2 mm FWHM close to the edges). Furthermore, the bias in the position estimation at the crystal edges that is typically found in monolithic scintillators is well below 1 mm even in the corners of the crystal.
authors.affiliation: Delft University of Technology, Mekelweg 15, 2629 JB Delft, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Seifert
authors.forename: Gerben
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: van der Lei
authors.forename: Herman T
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: van Dam
authors.forename: Dennis R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Schaart
mesh_terms: D055615:Electrical Equipment and Supplies; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012825:Silicon; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D012825:Silicon