Synchronisation and calibration of the 24-modules J-PET prototype with 300~mm axial field of view

Abstract

Research conducted in the framework of the J-PET project aims to develop a cost-effective total-body positron emission tomography scanner. As a first step on the way to construct a full-scale J-PET tomograph from long strips of plastic scintillators, a 24-strip prototype was built and tested. The prototype consists of detection modules arranged axially forming a cylindrical diagnostic chamber with the inner diameter of 360 mm and the axial field-of-view of 300 mm. Promising perspectives for a low-cost construction of a total-body PET scanner are opened due to an axial arrangement of strips of plastic scintillators, wchich have a small light attenuation, superior timing properties, and the possibility of cost-effective increase of the axial field-of-view. The presented prototype comprises dedicated solely digital front-end electronic circuits and a triggerless data acquisition system which required development of new calibration methods including time, thresholds and gain synchronization. The system and elaborated calibration methods including first results of the 24-module J-PET prototype are presented and discussed. The achieved coincidence resolving time equals to CRT = 490 $\pm$ 9 ps. This value can be translated to the position reconstruction accuracy $\sigma (\Delta l)=$ 18 mm which is fairly position-independent.

Accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Positronium imaging with the novel multiphoton PET scanner
• Optimisation of the event-based TOF filtered back-projection for online imaging in total-body J-PET
• Comparative studies of plastic scintillator strips with high technical attenuation length for the total-body J-PET scanner
• Performance study and calibration strategy of the HADES scintillator TOF Wall with fast digital readout