Towards a metamaterial approach for fast timing in PET: experimental proof-of-concept.

Towards a metamaterial approach for fast timing in PET: experimental proof-of-concept. Phys Med Biol. 2019 Apr 12;: Authors: Martinez Turtos R, Gundacker S, Auffray E, Lecoq P Abstract Achieving fast timing in positron emission tomography (PET) at the level of few tenth of picoseconds is limited by the photon emission rate of existent materials with standard scintillation mechanisms. This has led to consider quantum confined excitonic sub-1ns emission in semiconductors as a viable solution to enhance the amount of fast-emitted photons produced per gamma event. However the introduction of nanocrystals and nanostructures into the domain of radiation detectors is a challenging problem. In order to move forward along this line, the standard bulk detector geometry and readout should be updated to allow for the implementation of new materials and within others, compensate for some of their intrinsic limitations. In this paper we will cover two study cases in which a fast emitter is combined with state-of-the-art scintillators in a sampling geometry designed to provide better timing for a fraction of the 511keV events. For this test, we use a fast plastic scintillator BC-422 able to deliver a detector time resolution of 25ps FWHM (equivalent coincidence time resolution CTR of 35ps) and we combined it with LYSO or BGO 200μm thick plates building a sampling pixel composed by two active scintillating materials. We develop a new proof of conce...
Source: Physics in Medicine and Biology - Category: Physics Authors: Tags: Phys Med Biol Source Type: research