[Triumf-seminars] TRIUMF Seminar today at 14:00

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Date/Time: Thu 2008-07-10 at 14:00

Location:  Auditorium          

Speaker:   Tom Lewellen (University of Washington)

Title:     Small Animal PET Development at the University of Washington

Abstract: The Nuclear Medicine Physics group at the University of Washington has been developing a series of small PET scanners.   These have been "soup to nuts" projects that include detector design and fabrication as well as the support electronics.   Our first scanner, MiCES, is based on 0.8x0.8x10 mm arrays of crystals and achieves spatial resolution of 700 µm.  We are now working on two new detector designs.  One is still using arrays of crystals but is implementing a shared light scheme to provide depth-of-interaction information and maintain the 700 µm resolution of the current scanner.   A second is using slabs of crystals (50 x 50 mm) to provide similar resolution at a lower cost.   This second approach also derives depth-of-interaction information from the shape of the light response functions in the crystal.   To support both of these designs, a new electronics system (phase II) is also being developed.  It is an evolution of the Firewire based system developed for the MiCEs scanner, but exploits modern FPGAs to reduce the component count.   The new system is built around a "universal" board design that can support a wide variety of scanner geometries.   Finally, all of these new developments are being implemented with the goal of being able to operate the PET components within MRI imaging systems with field strengths ranging from 3 to 7 Tesla.  In this presentation, we will briefly review the MiCEs scanner design and then discuss the two new detector designs and the phase II electronics.

Stimulants available 15 minutes before the talk.

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