Novel Approach for Depth-of-Interaction Encoding in PET

Depth-of-interaction (DOI) encoding is an important requirement in clinical as well as small-animal positron emission tomography (PET). At present, almost none of the commercial PET scanners have DOI encoding capability, and, as a result, these scanners show parallax error, which degrades their spatial resolution for events that are distant from the central axis in the radial direction. This project will investigate a new detector design that promises to provide high resolution DOI encoding in a continuous manner, with single-ended detector readout. Phase I demonstrated the feasibility of obtaining high resolution, continuous DOI encoding with the new detector configuration with single ended scintillator readout. Phase II will be aimed at optimizing the detector design to achieve high DOI resolution, along with good energy and timing resolution. Multiple modules that incorporate the proposed design will be built and evaluated. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: The proposed detector technology should be very promising for small animal and clinical PET applications. It also should be applicable to gamma-ray imaging systems for astronomy, non-destructive studies, and nuclear non-proliferation, which also require depth-of­-interaction information.