BrainPET is a PET system for human brain imaging, developed by the Crystal Clear Collaboration members: Julich, Aaachen and CIEMAT.
It is composed of monolithic detector blocks with the following characteristics:
Main characteristics
- Continuous LYSO:Ce scintillator crystals
- Light readout by Hamamatsu S8550 APD matrices
Advantages over pixelated designs
- Larger active volume (as fraction of total volume)
- Simpler geometry and mechanics, custom shapes
- Continuous coordinates of interaction
- Lower cost
Principle of operation of a single block
- The sum signal from all pixels is proportional to the total energy deposited on a crystal
- Pattern of light distribution on all pixels determines the "point of entrance" of each incoming photon
- Neural Network (NN) supervised-learning algorithms are used for sets of possible angles of incidence.
To view more photos of BrainPET click here.