Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2007 Oct 1;580(2):919-924.
doi: 10.1016/j.nima.2007.06.038.

Recent Advances and Future Advances in Time-of-Flight PET

William W Moses  1
Affiliations

Recent Advances and Future Advances in Time-of-Flight PET

William W Moses. Nucl Instrum Methods Phys Res A. .

Abstract

Simple theory predicts that the statistical noise variance in PET can be reduced by an order of magnitude by using time-of-flight (TOF) information. This reduction can be obtained by improving the coincidence timing resolution, and so would be achievable in clinical, whole body studies using with PET systems that differ little from existing cameras. The potential impact of this development is large, especially for oncology studies in large patients, where it is sorely needed. TOF PET was extensively studied in the 1980's but died away in the 1990's, as it was impossible to reliably achieve sufficient timing resolution without sacrificing other important PET performance aspects, such as spatial resolution and efficiency. Recent advances in technology (scintillators, photodetectors, and high speed electronics) have renewed interest in TOF PET, which is experiencing a rebirth. However, there is still much to be done, both in instrumentation development and evaluating the true benefits of TOF in modern clinical PET. This paper looks at what has been accomplished and what needs to be done before time-of-flight PET can reach its full potential.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mechanism of time-of-flight noise reduction. a) In conventional PET, the fundamental measurement is the number of counts in a crystal-crystal pair, so the measurement of the activity in one voxel is coupled with the measurement of activity in all other voxels. b) In time-of-flight PET, timing information can be used to remove the coupling between voxels that are separated by more than the TOF measurement distance.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ter-Pogossian MM, Ficke DC, Yamamoto M, Hood JT. Design characteristics and preliminary testing of Super-PETT I, a positron emission tomograph utilizing photon time-of-flight information (TOF PET). Proceedings of The Workshop on Time of Flight Tomography; St. Louis, MO. 1982. pp. 37–41. - PubMed
    1. Ter-Pogossian MM, Ficke DC, Yamamoto M, Hood JT. Super PETTI: A positron emission tomograph utilizing photon time-of-flight information. IEEE Trans Med Img. 1982;MI-1:179–187. - PubMed
    1. Mullani NA, Wong WH, Hartz RK, Yerian K, Philippe EA, et al. Design of TOFPET: a high resolution time-of-flight positron camera. Proceedings of The Workshop on Time of Flight Tomography; St. Louis, MO. 1982. pp. 31–36.
    1. Gariod R, Allemand R, Cormoreche E, Laval M, Moszynski M. The LETI positron tomograph architecture and time of flight improvements. Proceedings of The Workshop on Time of Flight Tomography; St. Louis, MO. 1982. pp. 25–29.
    1. Wong WH, Mullani NA, Phillipe EA, Hartz R, Gould KL. Image improvement and design optimization of the time-of-flight PET. J Nucl Med. 1983;24:52–60. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources