Performance evaluation of developed dedicated breast PET scanner and improvement of the spatial resolution by wobbling: a Monte Carlo study

Purpose Molecular imaging, particularly PET scanning, has become an important cancer diagnostic tool. Whole-body PET is not effective for local staging of cancer because of their declining efficiency in detecting small lesions. The preliminary results of the performance evaluation of designed dedicated breast PET scanner presented. Methods and materials A new scanner is based on LYSO crystals coupled with SiPM, and it consists of 14 compact modules with a transaxial FOV of 180 mm in diameter. In this study, initial GATE simulation studies were performed to predict the spatial resolution, absolute sensitivity, noise equivalent count rate (NECR) and scatter fraction (SF) of the new design. Spatial wobbling acquisitions were also implemented. Finally, the obtained projections were reconstructed using analytical and iterative algorithms. Results The simulation results indicate that absolute sensitivity is 1.42% which is appropriate than other commercial breast PET systems. The calculated SF and NECR in our design are 20.6% and 21.8 kcps. The initial simulation results demonstrate the potential of this design for breast cancer detection. A small wobble motion to improve spatial resolution and contrast. Conclusion The performance of the dedicated breast PET scanner is considered to be reasonable enough to support its use in breast cancer imaging.