Advances in positron tomography for oncology (original) (raw)

Development of PET instrumentation over the past 42 years has moved from simple dualdetector coincidence scanners, to proposed systems having 60,000 detectors and simultaneous coverage of 15cm regions of the body with spatial resolutions better than 4 mm. The principal determinants of positron emission tomography (PET) instrumentation advances are positron range, noncollinearity of the annihilation photons, scattering, random event rates, detector size, efficiency, speed and light output; capability to correct for depth of crystal interaction, attenuation compensation, axial coverage, and rapid data analysis and presentation. While general-purpose systems with 2-mm resolution are expected, special-purpose PET devices are being built for breast and brain tumor studies with resolutions from 1.7 to 5 mm.