An Investigation of the Potential Benefits in Trading Energy Resolution for Timing Resolution in Time-of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography

Recent developments in scintillators and photodetectors have renewed the interest in time-of-flight positron emission tomography (TOF-PET). In this paper, we demonstrated that exact image reconstruction can be achieved with TOF-PET data generated by using coincidence windows that are smaller than the subject size. With this new possibility in TOF-PET imaging, we demonstrated the potential benefit of placing more emphasis on the timing resolution when developing TOF-PET systems, even though the energy resolution of the system may be sub-optimal. This observation can create more options in selecting scintillation materials and photodetector technologies that would otherwise be considered inappropriate for building TOF-PET systems.