Positron Emission Tomography has proved to be useful in the study of psychiatric disease such as epilepsy, neurologic disorders, brain function, cardiac metabolism, tumor detection, staging and prognosis. The PENN-PET scanner currently produced by UGM Medical Systems is designed specifically to serve the clinical needs and features a large axial field-of-view, equal resolution in all directions and a fully 3-D reconstruction method. The proposed research will lead to improved spatial resolution, improved count rate capability and more flexibility in geometry than is currently possible. The techniques to achieve this are equally applicabre to single photon Anger cameras as currently used in Nuclear Medicine and these applications will also be investigated as part of the phase II work. Furthermore a new scintillator, YA10(3)(Ce), will be investigated as an alternative to Nal(TI).Awardee's statement of the potential commercial applications of the research:The results of this research can be directly incorporated into the products currently sold by UGM Medical Systems. Potentially, the impact on single photon Anger cameras used in Nuclear Medicine will be far reaching.National Center for Research Resources (NCRR)
