Development of PhytoPET: A plant imaging PET system

The development and initial evaluation of a high-resolution positron emission tomography (PET) system to image the biodistribution of positron emitting tracers in live plants is underway. The positron emitting
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CO
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tracer is used in plant biology research investigating carbon sequestration in biomass, optimization of plant productivity and biofuel development. This PhytoPET design allows flexible arrangements of PET detectors based on individual standalone detector modules built from single 5 cm × 5 cm Hamamatsu H8500 position sensitive photomultiplier tubes. Each H8500 is coupled to a LYSO:Ce scintillator array composed of 48×48 elements that are 10 mm thick arranged with a 1.0 mm pitch. An Ethernet based 12-bit flash analog to digital data acquisition system with onboard coincident matrix definition is under development to digitize the signals. The detector modules of the PhytoPET system can be arranged and stacked to accommodate various sized plants and plant structures.