SUPERPETT 3000 TIME-OF-FLIGHT PET TOMOGRAPH - OPTIMIZATION OF FACTORS AFFECTING QUANTITATION

All PET tomographs are inherently quantitative imaging tools. However, to certify that the observed radioactivity in the organ of interest represents true underlying radioactivity concentration, requires an experimental/theoretical treatment of factors such as scatter, randoms, reconstruction parameters, recovery coefficients and cross-calibration procedure. We have used dual isotope experiments as an efficient method to check the overall tomograph performance and found that the inclusion of a ''real-time'' calibration tube standard in the tomograph field-of-view during scanning compensates for any temporal variation in the machine sensitivity as well as provide a built-in dead time correction. Reconstruction parameters and recovery coefficients were optimized through phantom experiments. Last but not least, we have shown through human studies that results similar to other head and whole body scanners have been achieved with the whole body Superpett 3000 time-of-flight tomograph at North Shore University Hospital.