Pilot Study of Timing Performance for Time-of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography Detector

In this work, LYSO scintillators and position sensitive photomultiplier tube (PS-PMT) were used to design the TOF-PET detector, and LYSO crystals of 3.2 mm×3.2 mm pitch could be distinguished. The coincidence time resolution of 379 ps was measured for the γ rays produced by positron annihilation with a reference detector of BaF₂, whose time resolution for 511 keV γ ray was measured as 159 ps. By subtracting the contribution of the BaF₂ detector, 344 ps time resolution could be calculated for the designed TOF-PET detector, and 486 ps coincidence time resolution for γ rays of positron annihilation can be expected for two such detectors. It means that the new detector for TOF-PET is feasible.