Liquid xenon in nuclear medicine: state-of-the-art and the PETALO approach

TL;DR

This paper reviews the use of liquid xenon in nuclear medicine, highlighting the PETALO approach that combines scintillation and Cherenkov light detection with silicon photomultipliers for improved PET imaging.

Contribution

It introduces the PETALO concept, a novel liquid xenon PET scanner design utilizing scintillation and Cherenkov light with silicon photomultipliers, supported by Monte Carlo simulations.

Findings

PETALO offers excellent intrinsic time resolution.

Potential for high-sensitivity TOF-PET using scintillation and Cherenkov light.

Liquid xenon’s transparency enhances detection capabilities.

Abstract

Liquid xenon has several attractive features, which make it suitable for applications to nuclear medicine, such as high scintillation yield and fast scintillation decay time, better than currently used crystals. Since the '90s, several attempts has been made to build Positron Emission Tomography scanners based on liquid xenon, which can be divided into two different approaches: on one hand, the detection of the ionization charge in TPCs, and, on the other one, the detection of scintillation light with photomultipliers. PETALO (Positron Emission Tof Apparatus with Liquid xenOn) is a novel concept, which combines liquid xenon scintillating cells and silicon photomultipliers for the readout. A first Monte Carlo investigation has pointed out that this technology would provide an excellent intrinsic time resolution, which makes it possible to measure the Time-Of-Flight with high efficiency. Also, the transparency of liquid xenon to UV and blue wavelengths opens the possibility of exploiting both scintillation and Cherenkov light for a high-sensitivity TOF-PET.