Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2013) 128: 73
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2013-13073-5

Regular Article

Resistive plate chambers in positron emission tomography

¹³⁶⁴ LIP - Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas, Rua Larga, Physics Department, University of Coimbra, 3004-516, Coimbra, Portugal
²³⁶⁴ Physics Department, University of Coimbra, 3004-516, Coimbra, Portugal
³³⁶⁴ ISEC - Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra, 3030-199, Coimbra, Portugal
⁴³⁶⁴ IBILI - Instituto Biomédico de Investigação da Luz e da Imagem, Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, 3000-548, Coimbra, Portugal
⁵³⁶⁴ ICNAS - Instituto de Ciências Nucleares Aplicadas à Saúde, University of Coimbra, 3000-548, Coimbra, Portugal

^* e-mail: rui@coimbra.lip.pt

Received: 23 May 2013
Accepted: 10 June 2013
Published online: 9 July 2013

Abstract

Resistive plate chambers (RPC) were originally deployed for high energy physics. Realizing how their properties match the needs of nuclear medicine, a LIP team proposed applying RPCs to both preclinical and clinical positron emission tomography (RPC-PET). We show a large-area RPC-PET simulated scanner covering an axial length of 2.4m —slightly superior to the height of the human body— allowing for whole-body, single-bed RPC-PET acquisitions. Simulations following NEMA (National Electrical Manufacturers Association, USA) protocols yield a system sensitivity at least one order of magnitude larger than present-day, commercial PET systems. Reconstruction of whole-body simulated data is feasible by using a dedicated, direct time-of-flight-based algorithm implemented onto an ordered subsets estimation maximization parallelized strategy. Whole-body RPC-PET patient images following the injection of only 2mCi of 18-fluorodesoxyglucose (FDG) are expected to be ready 7 minutes after the 6 minutes necessary for data acquisition. This compares to the 10-20mCi FDG presently injected for a PET scan, and to the uncomfortable 20-30minutes necessary for its data acquisition. In the preclinical field, two fully instrumented detector heads have been assembled aiming at a four-head-based, small-animal RPC-PET system. Images of a disk-shaped and a needle-like ²²Na source show unprecedented sub-millimeter spatial resolution.