Geometric sensitivity of ClearPET™ Neuro

ClearPET™ Neuro is a small-animal positron emission tomography (PET) scanner dedicated to brain studies on rats and primates. The design of ClearPET™ Neuro leads to a specific geometric sensitivity, characterized by inhomogeneous and, depending on the measurement setup, even incomplete data. With respect to reconstruction techniques, homogeneous and complete data sets are a ‘must’ for analytical reconstruction methods, whereas iterative methods take the geometrical sensitivity into account during the reconstruction process. Nevertheless, here a homogeneous geometric sensitivity over the field of view is highly desirable. Therefore, this contribution aims at studying the impact of different scanner geometries and measurement setups on the geometric sensitivity. A data set of coincident events is computed for certain settings that contains each possible crystal combination once. The lines of response are rebinned into normalizing sinograms and backprojected into sensitivity images. Both, normalizing sinograms and sensitivity images mirror the geometric sensitivity and therefore, provide information which setting enables most complete and homogeneous data sets. An optimal measurement setup and scanner geometry in terms of homogeneous geometric sensitivity is found by analyzing the sensitivity images.