2021/05/12 by Ryosuke Ota, Ota, Ryosuke, Sun Il Kwon +17
Physics and Astronomy · Medicine · #Radiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies #Medical Imaging Techniques and Applications #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2105.05805
Positron emission tomography, like many other tomographic imaging modalities, relies on an image reconstruction step to produce cross-sectional images from projection data. Detection and localization of the back-to-back annihilation photons produced by positron-electron annihilation defines the trajectories of these photons, which when combined with tomographic reconstruction algorithms, permits recovery of the distribution of positron-emitting radionuclides. Here we produce cross-sectional images directly from the detected coincident annihilation photons, without using a reconstruction algorithm. Ultra-fast radiation detectors with a resolving time averaging 32 picoseconds measured the difference in arrival time of pairs of annihilation photons, localizing the annihilation site to 4.8 mm. This is sufficient to directly generate an image without reconstruction and without the geometric and sampling constraints that normally present for tomographic imaging systems.