Liquid xenon in nuclear medicine: state-of-the-art and the PETALO approach

Abstract

A: Liquid xenon has several attractive features, which make it suitable for applications to nuclear medicine, such as high scintillation yield and fast scintillation decay time, better than currently used crystals. Since the '90s, several attempts has been made to build Positron Emission Tomography scanners based on liquid xenon, which can be divided into two different approaches: on one hand, the detection of the ionization charge in TPCs, and, on the other one, the detection of scintillation light with photomultipliers.PETALO (Positron Emission Tof Apparatus with Liquid xenOn) is a novel concept, which combines liquid xenon scintillating cells and silicon photomultipliers for the readout. A first Monte Carlo investigation has pointed out that this technology would provide an excellent intrinsic time resolution, which makes it possible to measure the Time-Of-Flight with high efficiency. Also, the transparency of liquid xenon to UV and blue wavelengths opens the possibility of exploiting both scintillation and Cherenkov light for a high-sensitivity TOF-PET. K: PET, Instrumentation and methods for time-of-flight (TOF) spectroscopy, Noble liquid detectors, Cherenkov arXiv:1712.05751v1 [physics.ins-det]

A next-generation liquid xenon observatory for dark matter and neutrino physics

“…The first liquid xenon detector prototypes for PET scans were built and tested around the same time [1280][1281][1282]. Further developments of liquid xenon detectors for PET came recently [1283][1284][1285][1286]. In a PET scan, patients are injected with small amounts of chemicals, such as sugar, where molecules have had common stable carbon atoms replaced with positron-emitting isotopes.…”

A Next-Generation Liquid Xenon Observatory for Dark Matter and Neutrino Physics

“…The first liquid xenon detector prototypes for PET scans were built and tested around the same time [1224][1225][1226]. Further developments of liquid xenon detectors for PET came recently [1227][1228][1229][1230]. In a PET scan, patients are injected with small amounts of chemicals, such as sugar, where molecules have had common stable carbon atoms replaced with positron-emitting isotopes.…”

PETALO: a Time-of-Flight PET with liquid xenon

“…) is a new concept that seeks to demonstrate that liquid xenon together with a SiPM-based readout and fast electronics, provide a significant improvement in the field of medical imaging with PET-TOF [4].…”