Performance of a high sensitivity PET scanner based on LSO panel detectors

We present the results of performance measurements for a new rotating panel detector research tomograph. The tomograph consists of five large-area LSO panel detectors. A long axial field of view (53 cm), high sensitivity, and high count rate capability (due to recently-developed fast electronics) are the most important features of this design. A peak noise equivalent count rate (NEC) of about 184 kcps has been measured, together with 2% absolute sensitivity for a 70 cm
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F line source and a spatial resolution less than 5 mm. Whole body patient images have been obtained, in two bed positions, 10 minutes per bed. An OP-OSEM3D algorithm has been implemented on a dedicated computer cluster used for reconstruction