Development of a high resolution PET detector module with depth of interaction information

Three configurations of a high-resolution detector module with a single bit of depth of interaction information have been built and evaluated. Each of the modules consists of two layers of discrete BGO (bismuth germanate) crystals. The modules use a discrete crystal light sharing technique to decode the crystal of interaction within each of the layers. Collimated line source measurements were made for each of the modules. The average calculated intrinsic spatial resolutions for the three modules were 2.5 mm FWHM for the front layer of detectors and 2.6 mm FWHM for the back layer of detectors. Additional tests were carried out on one of the modules to further evaluate the performance potentials of the basic design. Of these tests utilizing a selective window decoding scheme improved the performance of the module the most. These detector modules have been designed for use in a dedicated small animal research tomograph (SMART)