EndoTOFPET-US a Novel Multimodal Tool for Endoscopy and Positron Emission Tomography

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel multimodal endoscopy tool combining TOFPET and ultrasound for improved biomarkers in pancreatic and prostate cancer detection, emphasizing miniaturization and high-resolution capabilities.

Contribution

It presents the design, challenges, and solutions for a highly integrated, miniaturized multimodal instrument with advanced timing and spatial resolution for medical imaging.

Findings

Achieved coincidence time resolution better than 200 ps

Attained spatial resolution of approximately 1 mm

Developed a tracking system with sub-millimeter accuracy

Abstract

The EndoTOFPET-US project aims to jointly exploit Time-Of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography (TOFPET) and ultrasound endoscopy with a multi-modal instrument for the development of new biomarkers for pancreas and prostate oncology. The paper outlines the functionality of the proposed instrument and the challenges for its realization. The high level of miniaturization and integration poses strong demands to the fields of scintillating crystallography, ultra-fast photon detection, highly integrated electronics and system integration. Solutions are presented to obtain a coincidence time resolution better than 200 ps and a spatial resolution of ~1 mm with an asymmetric TOFPET detector. A tracking system with better than 1 mm spatial resolution precision enables the online alignment of the system. The detector design, the production and test status of the single detector