Commissioning and Characterization of a Dedicated High-Resolution Breast PET Camera

Abstract : Significant progress was made during the second funding year towards the goal of commissioning and characterizing a high resolution breast PET camera. We have received about 25% of the modules needed to construct the camera and about 80% of these passed our functionality criteria. We managed to construct 2 fins with 16 modules each and connect them to the readout electronics. We acquired data from these fins. We constructed two times one layer of one cartridge, including the finalized signal conditioning and readout electronics, as well as the high voltage biasing circuitry. Energy resolutions of 11.8 +/- 0.3% FWHM at 511 keV are obtained and a coincidence time resolution of 9.8 +/- 0.7 ns FWHM was measured. The construction of a block setup showed that we are able to identify multiple interaction photo-events, which allows us to increase the sensitivity of the camera significantly and is an indication of the possibility of the camera to measure interaction locations in 3 dimensions. The reported results show that we are on our path to construct the breast dedicated PET camera described in the project. We have overcome technical problems related to electronic noise. We plan to use the 1mm3 resolution PET camera to assist in breast cancer management by resolving inconclusive mammograms, performing local staging and analyzing response to therapy.