Cerenkov PET detector based on silicon photomultipliersConsuegra Rodríguez, Dania (Avtor) Korpar, Samo (Mentor) PETCherenkovPbF2TOFCTRSiPM.The use of Cherenkov light in positron emission tomography (PET) has the potential to improve the time-of-fight (TOF) resolution and reduce the cost of detectors. Lead fuoride (PbF2) has emerged as a highly performing radiator material suitable for TOF-PET application due to its excellent gamma stopping power and optical properties. Previous studies using coincidences between a small number of crystals have shown good performance in terms of coincidence time resolution (CTR). In this work, the feasibility of Cherenkov TOF-PET is studied in detail, extending the number of channels and optimizing the detectors for better performance. Simulations were used to study different detector geometries and PbF2 crystal optical surface treatments, up to a whole-body PbF2 TOF-PET scanner. The simulation data showed that the quality of reconstructed images obtained when using different Cherenkov TOF-PET scanner geometries is comparable to current state-of-theart scintillator scanners. Experiments with different detector confgurations were carried out to measure CTR and e ciency. The HRFlexTOT electronics enabled measurements of coincidences between two Cherenkov TOF-PET modules placed in a back-to-back confguration with up to 16 channels per module. Of particular interest is a multi-layer detector geometry, which improves the TOF resolution and reduces the parallax error without compromising the detection e ciency. With a multi-layer detector geometry, the CTR of the simulated whole-body PbF2 TOFPET scanner was 143 ps, out of which the fundamental limitation due to light production and transportation was only 22 ps. Experimentally, such CTR value could not yet be achieved due to the limited performance of silicon photomultiplier photodetectors currently available. With further development of the photodetectors and the readout electronics, Cherenkov TOF-PET could become a competitive reality in PET.20222022-10-21 08:15:01Doktorsko delo/naloga142139VisID: 128773COBISS_ID: 128062723sl