Positron-Emission-Tomography, being clinically utilized in nuclear medicine, provides non-invasive functional imaging of patients. The functional characterization of genetically modified animals such as mice can help to develop new methods for medical diagnosis and e.g. tumor treatment. In this work, the imaging properties of a small animal tomograph were significantly improved by carefully investigating the interactions of photons with the detector system by means of Monte Carlo simulations. A detection probability matrix was determined from these simulations and applied in statistical image reconstruction algorithms. Phantom and animal measurements proved the superior image quality and resolution achieved with this method compared to common reconstruction techniques. Furtheremore, this method was extended to a dual-layer small animal tomograph.
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Positron-Emission-Tomography, being clinically utilized in nuclear medicine, provides non-invasive functional imaging of patients. The functional characterization of genetically modified animals such as mice can help to develop new methods for medical diagnosis and e.g. tumor treatment. In this work, the imaging properties of a small animal tomograph were significantly improved by carefully investigating the interactions of photons with the detector system by means of Monte Carlo simulations. A...
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