Characterization of a Small Animal PET Detector Block Incorporating a Digital Photon Counter Array

Stortz, Greg; Thompson, Christopher J.; Retière, F.; Goertzen, Andrew L.; Kozłowski, Piotr; Shams, Ehsan; Thiessen, Jonathan D.; Walker, Matthew

doi:10.1109/tns.2015.2414653

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The advantage of using a 4×4 SiPM array (compared to larger 8×8 or 12×12 arrays) is that discretely shaping and digitizing the signal of all SiPM pixels can be avoided by utilizing signal multiplexing methods, whilst the performance is not significantly degraded due to the combination of noise from the 16 SiPM pixels (Downie et al 2013, Liu andGoertzen 2014). Digital SiPMs (Philips PDPC) consisting of 8×8 arrays of 4×4 mm SiPM pixels also are under investigation for preclinical PET, although the dataset sizes are very large as for light sharing applications the outputs of many neighboring SiPM elements must be digitized and considered in computing event locations (España et al 2014, Georgiou et al 2014, Stortz et al 2015.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and optimization of a high-resolution PET detector module for small-animal PET based on a 12 × 12 silicon photomultiplier array

Schmall

et al. 2015

Biomed. Phys. Eng. Express

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A high resolution PET detector module was designed and optimized based on a custom 12×12 Silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) array and commercially available readout electronics (SensL Ltd., Ireland). The total area of this SiPM array is 50.2 mm×50.2 mm, and consists of 3×3 sections each containing 4×4 SiPM elements. Each SiPM, made using 35 um microcell technology, has a sensitive area of 3.0 mm×3.0 mm in a 4.0 mm×4.0 mm package and is fabricated into an array with 4.2 mm pitch. The performance of this detector was evaluated using 16×16 arrays of 0.975 mm×0.975 mm×12 mm polished LYSO crystals. Such small crystals make one-to-one coupling between the SiPM and LYSO crystal impractical. In this work, therefore, the detector was evaluated using light sharing approaches. Flood histogram quality, signal amplitude, and energy resolution were compared at different bias voltages (28.0-32.5 V in 0.5 V intervals) using five light guides with different thickness (from 0.8 mm to 2.0 mm) at a fixed temperature of 5 °C by coupling the LYSO array to a single SiPM section. The best flood histogram was obtained at a bias voltage of 29.5 V using the 1.0 mm thick light guide. Under these conditions, all the LYSO crystals can be clearly separated and the average energy resolution was 18.6±1.9%. The timing resolution was 6.0±0.1 ns after leading edge time walk correction, obtained by using two identical detectors consisting of two 12×12 SiPM arrays and two 16×16 LYSO arrays. The LYSO array was moved such that it was coupled to the center of four SiPM sections and all crystals could still be clearly resolved. These results show that a high-resolution small-animal PET scanner could be developed based on these large-area SiPM arrays and commercially available electronics.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and optimization of a high-resolution PET detector module for small-animal PET based on a 12 × 12 silicon photomultiplier array

Schmall

et al. 2015

Biomed. Phys. Eng. Express

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“…Moreover, the 1 : 1 coupling of crystals would lead to more crystals interaction errors and loss of scattering between crystals, which may further reduce the sensitivity of the PET system. SiPM pixel array detector with some channel multiplexing methods were normally used to reduce the number of electronic channels [26][27][28]. The complexity and cost of the electronics part would be reduced by using multiplexing circuits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and measurement of Trans-PET basic detector module II using 6× 6 SiPM array for small-animal PET

et al. 2020

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Silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) coupled scintillation detectors, are considered as promising tools for basic design of imaging instrumentation for the next generation PET, PET/MRI, SPECT and autoradiography scanners. The precise technical knowledge is inadequate, and still some challenges need to be addressed in order to successfully implement the SiPM technology in high resolution PET systems. Firstly, the advantages of SiPM pixel array 1:1 coupled crystal detector were obvious, and has minimized the position resolution errors of charge sharing in multiplexing circuits. However, in the system level, too many electronic channels have perplexed with complications, such as complex, messy electronics or dedicated ASIC chips. Multiplexing circuits were usually used to lower the complexity and cost of electronics, which has resulted in gradual deterioration of the performances of the detectors. Secondly, the light guide has become a necessity in high-resolution preclinical PET detectors. For a complete SiPM detector block, the light yield of outermost two rows/columns crystals were blurred due to the edge effects. In order to avoid this edge deterioration effect, crystal array size was reduced than that of the SiPM array in many PET detectors. The PET system built by these detectors had big gaps between the detector modules, which has largely affected the quality of reconstructed images. In order to solve these key problems, the Trans-PET basic detection module (BDM) II was designed and implemented in this study. This module was a flexible, easy to upgrade, simple, box geometry, small animal PET scanner. A better balance could be achieved by this detector, while reducing the electronic channels, and could simultaneously enhance the position resolution and time performance. A specially customized semi-cutting light guide had been designed, which could be optically multiplexed and diffused to optimize the effect of edge deterioration, so that both the outermost and inner crystals could be clearly distinguished. Specifically, in this PET module, two type crystal arrays with different crystal size had been designed, 13× 13 crystal array with 1.89 mm width and 18× 18 crystal array with 1.2 mm width, based on the same 6× 6 SiPM array and frond-end electronics. The total area of 6× 6 SiPM was 25.0× 25.0 mm2, which was similar to Hamamatsu PSPMT R8900. The area of the SiPM array was slightly smaller than the size of the crystal array, in order to reduce the gap of the PET system built by this detector. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of this detector module, including position profile quality, energy resolution, timing resolution in different operating environment. Based on this detector module, PET scanners can easily be designed with different shapes such as, quadrilaterals, hexagonals, octagonals, dodecagonals, twenty-four-sides, and other shapes.

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“…DPCs have a very sophisticated integrated circuit attached, but still require additional logic to validate and encode events. Application to PET is described in a recent article by our group [ 22 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a PET Scanner for Simultaneously Imaging Small Animals with MRI and PET

Thompson

Goertzen

Thiessen

et al. 2014

Sensors

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Recently, positron emission tomography (PET) is playing an increasingly important role in the diagnosis and staging of cancer. Combined PET and X-ray computed tomography (PET-CT) scanners are now the modality of choice in cancer treatment planning. More recently, the combination of PET and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is being explored in many sites. Combining PET and MRI has presented many challenges since the photo-multiplier tubes (PMT) in PET do not function in high magnetic fields, and conventional PET detectors distort MRI images. Solid state light sensors like avalanche photo-diodes (APDs) and more recently silicon photo-multipliers (SiPMs) are much less sensitive to magnetic fields thus easing the compatibility issues. This paper presents the results of a group of Canadian scientists who are developing a PET detector ring which fits inside a high field small animal MRI scanner with the goal of providing simultaneous PET and MRI images of small rodents used in pre-clinical medical research. We discuss the evolution of both the crystal blocks (which detect annihilation photons from positron decay) and the SiPM array performance in the last four years which together combine to deliver significant system performance in terms of speed, energy and timing resolution.

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Characterization of a Small Animal PET Detector Block Incorporating a Digital Photon Counter Array

Cited by 5 publications

References 20 publications

Design and optimization of a high-resolution PET detector module for small-animal PET based on a 12 × 12 silicon photomultiplier array

Design and optimization of a high-resolution PET detector module for small-animal PET based on a 12 × 12 silicon photomultiplier array

Design and measurement of Trans-PET basic detector module II using 6× 6 SiPM array for small-animal PET

Development of a PET Scanner for Simultaneously Imaging Small Animals with MRI and PET

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