Design and simulation study for full size liquid Xe scintillation TOF-PET system

Liquid Xe as a scintillator has a very fast response. Also, the scintillation yield is very high, comparable to that of NaI(Tl) crystals. These properties show a possibility of application to time of flight-positron emission tomography (TOF-PET). From this perspective, we are developing a liquid Xe scintillation TOF-PET scanner. In previous study, a prototype for a TOF-PET system which consists of two identical liquid Xe detectors has been constructed and its performance was tested. As a result, an energy resolution of 15.9% (FWHM), a position resolution of 2.1-3.5 mm (FWHM), and a timing resolution of 260 ps (FWHM) between the two detectors were achieved for 511 keV gamma rays from positron annihilation. This property is sufficient to be used in TOF-PET. A spatial resolution of a reconstructed image at the center of field-of-view is 3.3 mm. Presently, we are designing a full size liquid Xe scintillation TOF-PET scanner. In this presentation, a design and simulation results for a full size liquid Xe scintillation TOF-PET system are presented