DESIGN STUDIES OF A DEPTH ENCODING LARGE-APERTURE PET CAMERA

The feasibility of a wholebody PET tomograph with the capacity to corr ect for the parallax error induced by the ]Depth-Of-Interaction of gam ma-rays is assessed through simulation, The experimental energy, depth , and transverse position resolutions of EGO block detector candidates are the main inputs to a simulation that predicts the point source re solution of the Depth Encoding Large Aperture Camera (DELAC). The resu lts indicate that a measured depth resolution of 7 mm (FWHM) is suffic ient to correct a substantial part of the parallax error for a point s ource at the edge of the Field-Of-View. A search for the block specifi cations and camera ring radius that would optimize the spatial resolut ion and its uniformity across the Field-Of-View is also presented.