Scatter Fraction, Count Rates, and Noise Equivalent Count Rate of a Single-Bed Position RPC TOF-PET System Assessed by Simulations Following the NEMA NU2-2001 Standards

Scatter Fraction (SF) and Noise Equivalent Count Rate (NECR) of a 2400 mm wide axial field-of-view Positron Emission Tomography (PET) system based on Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC) detectors with 300 ps Time Of Flight (TOF) resolution were studied by simulation using Geant4. The study followed the NEMA NU2-2001 standards, using the standard 700 mm long phantom and an axially extended one with 1800 mm, modeling the foreseeable use of this PET system. Data was processed based on the actual RPC readout, which requires a 0.2 μs non-paralyzable dead time for timing signals and a paralyzable dead time (τ_ps) for position signals. For NECR, the best coincidence trigger consisted of a multiple time window coincidence sorter retaining single coincidence pairs (involving only two photons) and all possible coincidence pairs obtained from Multiple coincidences, keeping only those for which the direct TOF-reconstructed point falls inside a tight region surrounding the phantom. For the 700 mm phantom, the SF was 51.8% and, with τ_ps = 3.0 μs, the peak NECR was 167 kcps at 7.6 kBq/cm³. Using τ_ps = 1.0 μs the NECR was 349 kcps at 7.6 kBq/cm³, and no peak was found. For the 1800 mm phantom, the SF was slightly higher, and the NECR curves were identical to those obtained with the standard phantom, but shifted to lower activity concentrations. Although the higher SF, the values obtained for NECR allow concluding that the proposed scanner is expected to outperform current commercial PET systems.