Investigation of the spatial resolution of PET imaging system measuring polarization-correlated Compton events

TL;DR

This study introduces a novel PET system that measures polarization-correlated gamma photons to potentially enhance image quality, demonstrating improved spatial resolution using correlated events compared to traditional photoelectric interactions.

Contribution

The paper presents a new PET demonstrator capable of measuring polarization-correlated Compton events, showing its effectiveness in reconstructing images and assessing spatial resolution.

Findings

Successful imaging of Ge-68 sources using correlated events

Spatial resolution improved at different diameters

Correlation-based measurements outperform photoelectric interactions

Abstract

Recent studies of positron emission tomography (PET) devices have shown that the detection of polarization-correlated annihilation quanta can potentially reduce the background and creation of false lines of response (LORs) leading to improved image quality. We developed a novel PET demonstrator system, capable of measuring correlated gamma photons with single-layer Compton polarimeters to explore the potential of the method. We tested the system using sources with clinically relevant activities at the University Hospital Centre Zagreb. Here we present, for the first time, the images of two Ge-68 line sources, reconstructed solely from the correlated annihilation events. The spatial resolution at two different diameters is determined and compared to the one obtained from events with photoelectric interaction.