Investigating the timing behavior of compton scattering in BGO for time-of-flight PET
Minseok Yi, Daehee Lee, Alberto Gola, Stefano Merzi, Michele Penna, Simon R Cherry, Jae Sung Lee, Sun Il Kwon
TL;DR
This study examines how inter-crystal scattering affects timing accuracy in BGO-based time-of-flight PET detectors and proposes strategies to mitigate its impact.
Contribution
The work introduces a method to experimentally assess and mitigate timing degradation caused by inter-crystal scattering in pixelated BGO detectors.
Findings
InterCS events showed a 221 ps FWHM timing resolution, worse than FED events at 184 ps FWHM.
InterCS events had a 4.73 average prompt photon yield in the first 1 ns, compared to 5.76 for FED events.
Energy-based timestamp selection was found to be suboptimal for maintaining timing accuracy.
Abstract
Objective. Bismuth germanate (BGO) has regained attention as a promising material for hybrid Cherenkov/scintillation time-of-flight positron emission tomography (TOF-PET). While excellent timing performance has been demonstrated in single-crystal studies using prompt Cherenkov photons, practical pixelated detector modules introduce appreciable inter-crystal scattering (InterCS) events that can degrade timing accuracy. The objective of this work was to experimentally investigate the impact of InterCS on Cherenkov-based timing in pixelated BGO detectors and to identify optimal timestamp selection strategies. Approach. A dual-pixel BGO detector was constructed and coupled to a segmented SiPM readout to enable spatially resolved energy and timing measurements. Events were classified into full-energy deposition (FED); primary crystal 511 keV absorption), InterCS, and penetration categories…
Genes, proteins, chemicals, diseases, species, mutations and cell lines named across the full text — each resolved to its canonical identifier and authoritative record.
Click any figure to enlarge with its caption.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 15
Figure 16
Figure 17
Figure 18
Figure 19
Figure 20
Figure 21
Figure 22
Figure 23
Figure 24
Figure 25
Figure 26
Figure 27
Figure 28
Figure 29
Figure 30
Figure 31
Figure 32
Figure 33
Figure 34Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsRadiation Detection and Scintillator Technologies · Medical Imaging Techniques and Applications · Particle Detector Development and Performance