DEDICATED BREAST PET/CT SYSTEM

We are constructing a dedicated breast PET/CT system. Our group is characterizing aspects of the performance of the PET component, and investigating the accuracy of image registration for the PET and CT systems. The PET component consists of a dual-headed flat-panel LSO PET scanner. The overall average energy resolution achieved for the system is 25%. In phantom measurements, the spatial resolution achieved by FBP reconstruction was 3.8 mm. In a Derenzo phantom experiment, 4.8, 4.0 and 3.2 mm rods were clearly resolved by FBP, and 4.8, 4.0, 3.2 and 2.4 mm were clearly resolved by MAP reconstruction. The accuracy of registration with the CT system was measured as 0.30 mm. The results show that PET component of our PET/CT system is yielding reasonable tomographic images, particularly when MAP reconstruction is used. Image registration between the PET and CT systems is effective. We are continuing to characterize aspects of the imaging performance of the PET component, and to investigate the accuracy of image registration for the two systems.

[gantry]
Design drawing of combined PET/CT gantry.

[multimodality images]
CT (left), PET (middle) and fused (right) dedicated phantom images.

conference record article from 2006 IEEE NSS/MIC conference (San Diego, CA)