Project: Ultra-Time-Of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography with multi-channel digital Silicon photomultipliers and photonic crystals

Acronym	UTOFPET (Reference Number: PS-2016_16)
Duration	30/03/2018 - 29/03/2021
Project Topic	New and emerging technologies are being rapidly adopted in multi-parametric molecular imaging (MMI). The race for innovating MMI devices is also driven from the fact that MMI is one of the pillars of the socalled "personalised medicine", that is being recognised as the upcoming revolution in the healthcare system. Sensitivity is one of the main figures of merit of a molecular imager and Time-of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography (TOF-PET) is by far the most sensitive imaging tool available as of the date. The highest sensitivity achievable with current TOF-PET devices is still lacking behind the level required for exploiting the full potential of MMI. This condition is going to change with the next generation of TOFPET detectors based on fully digital photonic sensing devices and nano-engineered scintillators coupling. This project embraces the most recent research results in TOF-PET detector technologies, including the recently introduced multi-channel digital SiPM (MD-SiPM) and photonic crystals (PhC), with the objective of demonstrating their advantages in a TOF-PET prototype ready for industrialisation. A new distributed acquisition system will be developed to process and transfer efficiently the high data rates produced by each MD-SiPM. The prototype will have two opposing detector heads with a sensitive area of 38 mm × 48 mm with and fill factor greater than 70%. The system will provide and intrinsic spatial resolution smaller than 2 mm FWHM and timing performances beyond the state of the art, i.e., below 200 ps coincidence time resolution (CTR), which will translate into higher imaging sensitivity, higher contrast, lower noise, faster convergence and improved robustness with respect to state of the art TOF-PET alternatives. The prototype will be highly scalable for applications that require a higher number of detector. In particular it will be well suited for preclinical imaging, brain imaging and low-dose whole body imaging.
Website	visit project website
Network	PhotonicSensing
Call	Photonics based sensing

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	University of Pisa	Coordinator	Italy
2	AGE Scientific s.r.l.	Partner	Italy
3	Universiteit Gent	Partner	Belgium
4	Molecubes NV	Partner	Belgium
5	École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne	Partner	Switzerland