Fundamental limits of positron emission mammography

We explore the causes of performance limitation in positron emission mammography cameras. We compare two basic camera geometries containing the same volume of 511 keV photon detectors, one with a parallel plane geometry and another with a rectangular geometry. We find that both geometries have similar performance for the phantom imaged (in Monte Carlo simulation), even though the solid angle coverage of the rectangular camera is about 50% higher than the parallel plane camera. The reconstruction algorithm used significantly affects the resulting image; iterative methods significantly outperform the commonly used focal plane tomography. Finally, the characteristics of the tumor itself, specifically the absolute amount of radiotracer taken up by the tumor, will significantly affect the imaging performance.