Roadmap toward the 10 ps time-of-flight PET challenge.

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_ADA049943427
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Publication sub-type
Review (review): journal as complete as possible of one specific subject, written based on exhaustive analyses from published work.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Roadmap toward the 10 ps time-of-flight PET challenge.
Journal
Physics in medicine and biology
Author(s)
Lecoq P., Morel C., Prior J.O., Visvikis D., Gundacker S., Auffray E., Križan P., Turtos R.M., Thers D., Charbon E., Varela J., de La Taille C., Rivetti A., Breton D., Pratte J.F., Nuyts J., Surti S., Vandenberghe S., Marsden P., Parodi K., Benlloch J.M., Benoit M.
ISSN
1361-6560 (Electronic)
ISSN-L
0031-9155
Publication state
Published
Issued date
22/10/2020
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
65
Number
21
Pages
21RM01
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article
Publication Status: epublish
Abstract
Since the seventies, positron emission tomography (PET) has become an invaluable medical molecular imaging modality with an unprecedented sensitivity at the picomolar level, especially for cancer diagnosis and the monitoring of its response to therapy. More recently, its combination with x-ray computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance (MR) has added high precision anatomic information in fused PET/CT and PET/MR images, thus compensating for the modest intrinsic spatial resolution of PET. Nevertheless, a number of medical challenges call for further improvements in PET sensitivity. These concern in particular new treatment opportunities in the context personalized (also called precision) medicine, such as the need to dynamically track a small number of cells in cancer immunotherapy or stem cells for tissue repair procedures. A better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the image would allow detecting smaller size tumours together with a better staging of the patients, thus increasing the chances of putting cancer in complete remission. Moreover, there is an increasing demand for reducing the radioactive doses injected to the patients without impairing image quality. There are three ways to improve PET scanner sensitivity: improving detector efficiency, increasing geometrical acceptance of the imaging device and pushing the timing performance of the detectors. Currently, some pre-localization of the electron-positron annihilation along a line-of-response (LOR) given by the detection of a pair of annihilation photons is provided by the detection of the time difference between the two photons, also known as the time-of-flight (TOF) difference of the photons, whose accuracy is given by the coincidence time resolution (CTR). A CTR of about 10 picoseconds FWHM will ultimately allow to obtain a direct 3D volume representation of the activity distribution of a positron emitting radiopharmaceutical, at the millimetre level, thus introducing a quantum leap in PET imaging and quantification and fostering more frequent use of <sup>11</sup> C radiopharmaceuticals. The present roadmap article toward the advent of 10 ps TOF-PET addresses the status and current/future challenges along the development of TOF-PET with the objective to reach this mythic 10 ps frontier that will open the door to real-time volume imaging virtually without tomographic inversion. The medical impact and prospects to achieve this technological revolution from the detection and image reconstruction point-of-views, together with a few perspectives beyond the TOF-PET application are discussed.
Keywords
10 ps TOF-PET, Detection of annihilation photons, Image reconstruction, Photo-detectors, positron emission tomography
Pubmed
Web of science
Create date
14/06/2020 19:43
Last modification date
22/12/2020 7:26
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