Tomographic evaluation of a dual head PET

In this article we present the performance results in tomographic mode of a low cost PET camera, dedicated for small animal imaging. The system consists of two pixelated LSO crystal arrays, two Hamamatsu H8500 PSPMTs, fast amplification electronics and an FPGA based read out system. Tomographic experiments were carried out using phantoms consisted by capillary line sources positioned on a rotated controlled motor. The opposite PET heads are static during the tomographic experiments. The parameters related to: (i) saturation as a function of head distance and acceptance angle, (ii) effect of projections number, (iii) spatial resolution as a function of heads distance, were examined. Image reconstruction has been carried out with QSPECT, an opensource software developed by our group. This software is developed for 2D reconstruction of parallel projections using projection raw data obtained from coincidence images.