Time-of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography with Resistive Plate Chamber Detectors: An Unlikely but Promising Approach

The cost-effectiveness of resistive plate chamber detectors and their very good timing characteristics, open the possibility to build affordable time-of-flight positron emission tomography systems with a large axial field-of-view. Simulations suggest that, under reasonable assumptions, the absolute 3D true sensitivity, spatial resolution, and noise equivalent count rate of such systems for human whole-body screening, may exceed that of present crystal-based PET technology. However, due to the lack of energy resolution, although having energy sensitivity, the scatter fraction is expected to be considerably higher than that presented by crystal-based PET scanners. In the present paper, the simulation work done so far to access the expected performance of a resistive plate chamber time-of-flight-PET system with 2400 mm length axial field-of-view, a time resolution of 300 ps full width at half maximum for photons pairs, and depth-of-interaction information, will be revised.