SIMULTANEOUS PET AND MR-IMAGING

We have developed a prototype PET detector which is compatible with a clinical MRI system to provide simultaneous PET and MR imaging. This s ingle-slice PET system consists of 48 2 x 2 x 10 mm(3) LSO crystals in a 38 mm diameter ring configuration that can be placed inside the rec eiver coil of the MRI system, coupled to three multi-channel photomult ipliers housed outside the main magnetic held via 4 m long and 2 mm di ameter optical fibres. The PET system exhibits 2 mm spatial resolution , 41% energy resolution at 511 keV and 20 ns timing resolution. Simult aneous PET and MR phantom images were successfully acquired.