CHAPTER 6: Positron Emission Tomography Instrumentation

The basic principles of positron emission tomography (PET) systems have not changed since their conception in the mid-1970s. Almost all PET scanners consist of an annular arrangement of multiple scintillation detectors to build an entire ring surrounding the object to be imaged. The scintillation detector, which is the most essential building block of most PET scanners, consists of two key components: the scintillator and the photodetector. Dedicated data acquisition electronics convert charges from the scintillation detectors to digital signals, analyses them, sorts, and then stores them for image reconstruction. This chapter introduces the most important components and building blocks of common PET systems and discusses their performance, their limitations and their underlying physical principles. Further relevant methods for obtaining spatial and temporal information from scintillation detector signals are also briefly discussed. The chapter concludes by presenting the general concepts of typical PET system designs, the most important PET performance parameters and an overview of several representative existing systems.