First Positronium Lifetime Imaging using ${}^{52}$Mn and ${}^{55}$Co with a plastic-based PET scanner

Abstract

Positronium Lifetime Imaging (PLI) extends positron emission tomography by using the lifetime of positronium atoms as a probe of tissue molecular architecture. In this work, we report the first PLI measurements performed with ${}^{52}$Mn and ${}^{55}$Co using the modular J-PET. Four samples were studied in each experiment: two Certified Reference Materials (polycarbonate and fused silica) and two human tissues (cardiac myxoma and adipose). The selection of PLI events was based on the registration of two 511~keV annihilation photons and one prompt gamma in triple coincidence. From the resulting lifetime spectra we extracted the mean ortho-positronium lifetime ${\tau }_{\text{oPs}}$ and the mean positron lifetime $\Delta T_{\text{mean}}$ for each sample. The measured values of ${\tau }_{\text{oPs}}$ in polycarbonate using both isotopes matches well with the certified reference values. Furthermore, ${}^{55}$Co reproduced identical results for fused-silica measurements at their respective uncertainty levels. In contrast, measurements with ${}^{52}$Mn in fused silica show a minor deviation, which could be caused by the Parafilm spacer. In myxoma and adipose tissue, the reduced ${\tau }_{\text{oPs}}$ values are mainly linked to the long storage history of the samples rather than to the choice of isotope. Comparing peak-to-background ratios and spectral purity, ${}^{55}$Co provides cleaner PLI data under the same experimental conditions. Although ${}^{52}$Mn offers a longer half-life and a multi gamma cascade enhancing ${\beta }^{+}$ + $\gamma$ coincidences, but at the expense of higher background. In this study, we demonstrate that the applied selection criteria on the data measured with the modular J-PET can be used for PLI studies even with radionuclides with complex decay patterns.

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Cited by in corpus (1)

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