Title: Count rate performance of the Inveon small animal PET scanner
Abstract: 1702 Objectives: The Inveon is a new Positron Emission Tomography scanner dedicated to imaging small animals. The count rate performance of the scanner was evaluated for mouse imaging. Methods: The count rate data were obtained using a C-11 solution in the proposed NEMA mouse-like phantom which had a 6 cm axial length; the axial length of the scanner is 12.7 cm. The phantom was scanned over several half lives with a 350-650 keV energy window and a 3.4 ns timing window. The list-mode data were sorted to sinograms by single slice rebinning and the true and random counts were extracted to compute the scatter and noise equivalent count rates (NECR) following the NEMA standard. The system scatter fraction (SF) was also calculated and plotted as a function of activity. Under the assumption that the SF is constant with activity, a rapid approximate NECR calculation was also developed. Results: The peak NECR was found to be 1.50 Mcps at 123 MBq. The average system SF over all time frames was 8.8 %. The SF was relatively constant, however, a slight bias was present at higher activities (>50 MBq). The nearly constant SF enables estimation of the NECR directly from header information with the approximate source distribution known. This simple calculation may allow for scanner settings to be optimized more quickly. For example, the NECR, at high activities, may be improved using different energy or coincidence timing windows. Conclusions: The count rate evaluation demonstrates the potential of this system for performing dynamic imaging in mice. Due to the timing and energy resolution, the random and scatter event rates are small in comparison to the true counts and do not significantly reduce the NEC offering a high count rate performance and low SF. Research Support: CIHR, OGSST.
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-05-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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