Investigation of Novel Preclinical Total Body PET Designed With J-PET Technology: A Simulation Study

Abstract

The growing interest in human-grade total body positron emission tomography (PET) systems has also application in small animal research. Due to the existing limitations in human-based studies involving drug development and novel treatment monitoring, animal-based research became a necessary step for testing and protocol preparation. In this simulation-based study two unconventional, cost-effective small animal total body PET scanners (for mouse and rat studies) have been investigated in order to inspect their feasibility for preclinical research. They were designed with the novel technology explored by the Jagiellonian-PET (J-PET) Collaboration. Two main PET characteristics: sensitivity and spatial resolution were mainly inspected to evaluate their performance. Moreover, the impact of the scintillator dimension and time-of-flight on the latter parameter was

Technical opportunities and challenges in developing total-body PET scanners for mice and rats

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Fig. 1 Axial length and diameter of small animal scanners with axial lengths longer than 90 mm [ 13 , 21 , 28 – 31 , 38 , 40 – 48 ]. Only scanners with published results were selected.

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“…References of the scanners are shown in Table 3

Fig. 2 Volumetric resolution and sensitivity at the center of small animal scanners with axial lengths longer than 90 mm [ 13 , 21 , 28 – 31 , 38 , 40 – 48 ], which corresponds to Fig. 1 .

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“…Opposed to the traditional PET design concept, J-PET uses axially arranged detection units, each consisting of a plastic scintillator strip readout with silicon photomultipliers on both ends. Although the J-PET technology was initially developed for clinical PET scanners, recently, the sensitivity of a total-body mouse J-PET and a total-body rat J-PET were simulated using the GATE software [ 48 ]. The mouse J-PET scanner is based on 1 × 1 × 230 mm 3 EJ-230 plastic scintillators, and has a ring diameter of 110 mm and an axial length of 230 mm.…”

“…NanoPET Commercially available scanner provided by Mediso [45] A-PET An animal PET scanner developed by Dr. Suleman Surti [40] Inveon Siemens Inveon PET [43] Metis Metis PET is commercially provided by Shandong Madic Technology Co.,Ltd [47] IRIS IRIS PET is commercially provided by Medilumine Inc [46] ClairvivoPET ClairvivoPET is a commercial provided by Shimadzu Corp., Japan [41] HiPET A small animal PET scanner developed by Dr. Zheng Gu [30] LabPET-12 Scanner developed at University de Sherbrooke, Canada [42] ClearPET ClearPET was manufactured by Raytest Isotopenmessgeraete GmbH, Germany [44] Albira Si PET Bruker Albira Si fully integrated PET/SPECT/CT [29] SIAT aPET A small animal PET developed at Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, China [31] β-CUBE Scanner developed by MOLECUBES, Belgium [28] quadHIDAC32 Scanner developed by Oxford Positron Systems [38] SimPET-X A PET insert for simultaneous mouse total-body PET/MR imaging [13] Yamaya's PET A total-body small animal PET is underdeveloped at Dr. Taiga Yamaya's Lab, Japan [21] Mouse J-PET A total-body mouse J-PET simulated by Jagiellonian University [48] Rat J-PET A total-body rat J-PET simulated by Jagiellonian University [48] HS-BGO PET A total-body small animal PET with ~ 330-mm axial FOV is underdeveloped at University of California at Davis H 2 RS160 A high-resolution (0.5 mm) and high sensitivity PET with 254-mm axial FOV simulated at University of California at Davis [12] UHS-PET An over 50% sensitivity PET proposed and simulated by University of California at Davis [50]…”

System characteristics comparison of the Walk-Through Total-Body PET and the Biograph Vision Quadra PET/CT

“…This issue inspired extensive efforts to develop affordable alternative systems by research groups around the world. Possible approaches include sparse configurations to reduce the total number of detectors while maintaining a long AFOV [9], the use of alternative, cheaper scintillation materials such as BGO [8] or plastic scintillators [10], and monolithic detector blocks [11].…”