SBIR-STTR Award

Positron emission tomography has been shown to be useful in the diagnosis of both cardiac and neurologic disorders. The goal of this project is the development of a positron emission tomograph which, due to its simple design, will be more suitable for routine clinical application than most research oriented positron tomographs.The single crystal positron tomography will have a cylindrical scintillation detector to which approximately 160 photomultipliers are coupled. It will have a diameter of 60 cm with an axial field of view of approximately 12 cm, thus making it suitable for brain imaging.Phase I of the proposal consists of a feasibility study which will hopefully lead to the construction of a complete scanner as part of phase II.National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)

Positron emission tomography (PET) has been shown to be useful in the diagnosis of a wide variety of neurological and cardiac diseases. For neurological imaging, dedicated brain scanners have the advantages of increased sensitivity and better spatial resolution due to their reduced apterture size and detector separation. We propose the design and construction of a prototype dedicated brain scanner which will have significant advantages for clinical neurological imaging. The scanner is based on the use of a detector composed of a single, continuous cylindrical NaI(T1) crystal. This crystal, 65 cm in diameter and 21 cm in its axial extent, would be coupled to approximately 160 photomultipliers to yield a tomographic with a useful axial field-of- view of at least 12 cm and 2 mm data sampling along all three image axes. The use of a single NaI(T1) crystal results not only in dramatically reduced system complexity and cost, but also in good spatial, timing, and energy resolution. In Phase I of the project, the feasibility of manufacturing the cylindrical crystal and of detecting coincidences in a single continuous crystal were demonstrated. In Phase II, we intend to construct and test a prototype of the single-crystal tomograph.