Implementation of a 3D positron emission tomography Monte-Carlo simulator

Reports the implementation of a realistic Monte-Carlo simulator, dedicated to PET simulation. The anthropomorphic voxelised Zubal phantom is used as the propagation volume. Relative activities can be set in each organ and in analytically defined sources. Thus it is possible to simulate turners and background activities. Monte-Carlo methods are used to simulate the emission and annihilation of positrons, the propagation of the two resulting 511 keV photons, the detection, coincidence and radioactive decay processes. Probabilities of photon interactions are computed in each voxel according to the density and the chemical nature of tissues and photon energy. The geometry of the detection system is widely adjustable.