Compton Scattering in Clinical PET/CT With High Resolution Half Ring PET Insert Device.

The integration of a high resolution PET insert into a conventional PET system can significantly improve the resolution and the contrast of its images within a reduced imaging field of view. For the rest of the scanner imaging field of view, the insert is a highly attenuating and scattering media. In order to use all available coincidence events (including coincidences between 2 detectors in the original scanner, namely the scanner-scanner coincidences), appropriate scatter and attenuation corrections have to be implemented. In this work, we conducted a series of Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the composition of the scattering background and the importance of the scatter correction. We implemented and tested the Single Scatter Simulation (SSS) algorithm for a hypothetical system and show good agreement between the estimated scatter using SSS and Monte Carlo simulated scatter contribution. We further applied the SSS to estimate scatter contribution from an existing prototype PET insert for a clinical PET/CT scanner. The results demonstrated the applicability of SSS to estimate the scatter contribution within a clinical PET/CT system even when there is a high resolution half ring PET insert device in its imaging field of view.