Comparative study of microPET® FOCUS and ECAT HRRT PET systems for small rodents imaging

This work presents a comparison between The ECAT HRRT PET scanner and the microPET® FOCUS 220 system performances for small rodent imaging applications. We show that the resolution is below 2 mm within a diameter of 6 cm with the FOCUS system and it is below 3 mm within a diameter of 12 cm when using the ECAT HRRT. Moreover, the NEC rate peak is 1.7 Mcps at 2.6 mCi for the HRRT and 0.8 Mcps at 4.6 mCi for the FOCUS. Finally, the FOCUS system is clearly more adapted for brain rat imaging and tumor detection for mice imaging. On the other hand, the ECAT HRRT scanner is better suited for rat imaging in the field of pharmaco-kinetic studies.