title: Design study of dedicated brain PET with polyhedron geometry.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Despite being the conventional choice, whole body PET cameras with a 76 cm diameter ring are not the optimal means of human brain imaging.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  In fact, a dedicated brain PET with a better geometrical structure has the potential to achieve a higher sensitivity, a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and a better imaging performance.
  
  
  METHODS
  In this study, a polyhedron geometrical dedicated brain PET (a dodecahedron design) is compared to three other candidates via their geometrical efficiencies by calculating the Solid Angle Fractions (SAF); the three other candidates include a spherical cap design, a cylindrical design, and the conventional whole body PET.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The spherical cap and the dodecahedron have an identical SAF that is 58.4% higher than that of a 30 cm diameter cylinder and 5.44 times higher than that of a 76 cm diameter cylinder. The conceptual polygon-shape detectors (including pentagon and hexagon detectors based on the PMT-light-sharing scheme instead of the conventional square-shaped block detector module) are presented for the polyhedron PET design. Monte Carlo simulations are performed in order to validate the detector decoding.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results show that crystals in a pentagon-shape detector can be successfully decoded by Anger Logic. The new detector designs support the polyhedron PET investigation.
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.|Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Han
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Dong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
authors.forename: JianFeng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
authors.forename: Zhihong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Su
authors.affiliation: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Qiyu
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Peng
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio
keywords: Positron emission tomography (PET); brain imaging; polyhedron geometry