Experimental validation of the ANTS2 code for modelling optical photon transport in monolithic LYSO crystals

•ANTS2 Monte Carlo code was used to model the transport of optical photons in scintillation-based detectors for PET.•Study of the LYSO background spectrum of monolithic LYSO crystals.•Several optical properties of the scintillator surface wrapping (diffuse reflective, specular reflective or absorbent) were considered.•Good agreement between simulated and experimental data for all cases was found. In this work the scintillation energy spectra originating from the background radioactivity from polished monolithic lutetium yttrium oxyorthosilicate coupled to position-sensitive silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) was studied using the open source Monte Carlo simulation package ANTS2. Two crystal sizes, fully and partially covering the photosensor area, three surface crystal wrappings (black, specular or diffuse) and the full signal formation process in the photosensor were considered. The simulation results were validated with experimental data acquired under the same geometric and detector operating conditions. In all cases ANTS2 simulated spectra have very good agreement with experimental results, reproducing the expected shape, with correct onset and end at 88 and 1190 keV, respectively, as well as sharp edges at the reference energies of 88, 88 + 202, 88 + 307 and 88 + 202 + 307 keV. The normalized root-mean square error between simulated and measured spectra varied between 4.3% and 10.4%.