Printed sources for positron emission tomography (PET)

We have developed a method that allows manufacturing of ¹⁸F radioactive printed sources of any size and shape using a standard ink-jet printer. To test the point sources we used them to measure the resolution of three different tomographs, the Siemens/CTI ECAT 953B, the CPS High resolution tomograph (HRRT) and the Concorde microPET R4. The resolution of these tomographs spans a fairly wide range. Where appropriate, the resolution agrees with published values. A preliminary comparison of the point FWHM obtained with and without additional attenuating material showed no influence of the additional attenuation material on their values, even though the presence of the attenuating material increased the counting statistics by approximately 50%.