State-of-the-art of PET scanners for small animal and breast cancer imaging

The success of PET systems for dedicated applications such as small animal and breast cancer imaging is largely due to the continuous development of high-resolution, high sensitivity instrumentation for gamma ray detection. This paper reports on some recent advances in the technology together with a brief review of the state-of-the-art of PET systems in these fields. A brief overview of the near-future perspectives is also presented.