POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY (PET) TIMING CALIBRATION USING COINCIDENCES INVOLVING HIGH-ENERGY CASCADE [GAMMA] FROM PROMPT-[GAMMA] POSITRON EMITTERS

Timing calibration of a positron emission tomography (PET) imaging device (2) uses a radioactive source (20) comprising a positron-emitting radioisotope having a decay path including emission of two oppositely directed 511 keV gamma rays and a cascade gamma ray at a cascade gamma ray energy. A timestamped radiation detection event data set acquired from the radioactive source by the PET imaging device is processed using energy window filtering (32) and time window filtering (36) to generate a coincidence data set (40, 42, 44) including event pairs (40) each consisting of two coincident 511 keVevents and cascade event pairs (42) or triplets (44) each consisting of at least one coincident 511 keV event and a coincident cascade event at the cascade gamma ray energy. A timing calibration (12)is generated using the coincidence data set. The timing calibration comprises offset times for PET detectors of the PET imaging device. 对正电子发射断层摄影(PET)成像设备(2)的计时校准使用放射源(20)，所述放射源包括发射正电子的放射性同位素，所述发射正电子的放射性同位素具有衰减路径，所述衰减路径包括两条相