title: Performance of the Tachyon Time-of-Flight PET Camera.
abstract: We have constructed and characterized a time-of-flight Positron Emission Tomography (TOF PET) camera called the Tachyon. The Tachyon is a single-ring Lutetium Oxyorthosilicate (LSO) based camera designed to obtain significantly better timing resolution than the ~ 550 ps found in present commercial TOF cameras, in order to quantify the benefit of improved TOF resolution for clinically relevant tasks. The Tachyon's detector module is optimized for timing by coupling the 6.15 × 25 mm2side of 6.15 × 6.15 × 25 mm3LSO scintillator crystals onto a 1-inch diameter Hamamatsu R-9800 PMT with a super-bialkali photocathode. We characterized the camera according to the NEMA NU 2-2012 standard, measuring the energy resolution, timing resolution, spatial resolution, noise equivalent count rates and sensitivity. The Tachyon achieved a coincidence timing resolution of 314 ps +/- ps FWHM over all crystal-crystal combinations. Experiments were performed with the NEMA body phantom to assess the imaging performance improvement over non-TOF PET. The results show that at a matched contrast, incorporating 314 ps TOF reduces the standard deviation of the contrast by a factor of about 2.3.
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology and Imaging Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA.
authors.forename: Q
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology and Imaging Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA.
authors.forename: W-S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Choong
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology and Imaging Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vu
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology and Imaging Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA.
authors.forename: J S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Huber
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology and Imaging Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Janecek
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology and Imaging Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology and Imaging Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA.
authors.forename: R H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Huesman
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616 USA.
authors.forename: Jinyi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616 USA.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology and Imaging Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA.
authors.forename: W W
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Moses
keywords: Signal-to-noise ratio; time-of-flight; timing resolution