Characterization of a scintillating mini-detector for time-of-flight positron emission tomography with depth-of-interaction.

By exploiting a suitable treatment of the scintillator surfaces, along with silicon photomultiplier photodetectors and specific algorithms for raw data analysis, we achieved a remarkable tradeoff between energy, time, and depth-of-interaction (DOI) resolution, thus supporting the feasibility of a prostate time-of-flight positron emission tomography probe, magnetic resonance imaging compatible, with the required features and performance. In numbers this means a detector element of 1.5 mm × 1.5 mm × 10 mm, promising to achieve at the same time energy resolution around 11.5%, coincidence resolving time around 300 ps corresponding to a space resolution <5 cm along the line of response, and DOI resolution even below 1 mm. We stress that such a time resolution allows to increase significantly the noise equivalent counting rate, and consequently improve the image quality and the lesion detection capability.