Initial study design of a breast-dedicated PET scanner with biopsy capability using GATE

A combination of breast-dedicated positron emission tomography (PET) with biopsy capability can detect cancer in women with radiodense and/or fibrocystic breasts and simultaneously guide the biopsy of suspicious breast lesions. In this study, Monte Carlo simulation model of the PET components was developed and initial GATE simulation studies were performed to predict the absolute sensitivity, noise equivalent count rate (NECR) and scatter fraction (SF) of this design. In the simulated measurements, the central point source sensitivity is 4.77 % (47.65 kcps/MBq) with an energy window of 350–650 keV. For a breast phantom with a capillary source, the SF reaches 32.6% and NECR is 8.65 kcps with an activity of 30 µCi 18 F in a line source. The initial simulation results demonstrate the capability of this PET system for breast cancer detection.