Endo-TOFPET-US: A multimodal ultrasonic probe featuring time of flight PET in diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopy

This work outlines the functionality of a new medical instrument and describes the research and development work aiming at new and higher performance imaging techniques with Time of Flight-PET capability in endoscopy and surgical oncology. It focuses on the associated scientific and technological challenges to be met in fields such as scintillating crystallography, ultra-fast photo-detection, highly integrated electronics, and system integration. This will highlight possible answers and solutions that derive from techniques and instrumentation prominent in high energy physics. Special emphasis is put on new developments of scintillators and diffractive optics to increase light output, and fast and compact photodetectors such as silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) with the option of single SPAD readout. In view of the targeted coincidence time of flight performance of 200 ps FWHM equivalent to 30 mm along the line of response (LOR), tests using cerium–calcium-co-doped LSO crystals of 10 mm length and commercial SiPMs from Hamamatsu already produced a coincidence time resolution (CTR) of better than 170 ps FWHM.