PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Joel S. Karp
AU  - Varsha Vishwanath
AU  - Michael Geagan
AU  - Gerd Muehllehner
AU  - Austin Pantel
AU  - Michael Parma
AU  - Amy Perkins
AU  - Jeffrey Schmall
AU  - Matthew Werner
AU  - Margaret E. Daube-Witherspoon
TI  - PennPET Explorer: Design and Preliminary Performance of a Whole-body Imager
AID  - 10.2967/jnumed.119.229997
DP  - 2019 Jun 01
TA  - Journal of Nuclear Medicine
PG  - jnumed.119.229997
4099  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/early/2019/06/21/jnumed.119.229997.short
4100  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/early/2019/06/21/jnumed.119.229997.full
AB  - We report on the development of the PennPET Explorer whole-body imager. Methods: The PennPET Explorer is a multi-ring system designed with a long axial field-of-view (AFOV). The imager is scalable and comprises multiple 22.9-cm long ring-segments, each with 18 detector modules based on the digital Philips Digital Photon Counting (PDPC) silicon photomultiplier. A prototype three-segment imager has been completed and tested with an active 64-cm AFOV. Results: The instrument design is described, and its physical performance measurements are presented. These include sensitivity of 55 kcps/MBq, spatial resolution of 4.0 mm, energy resolution of 12%, timing resolution of 250 ps, and a noise equivalent count rate above 1000 kcps beyond 30 kBq/cc. Following an evaluation of lesion torso phantoms to characterize the imager’s quantitative accuracy, human studies were performed on normal volunteers. Conclusion: The physical performance measurements validate the system design and lead to the high quality human studies. A more detailed examination of human imaging with this whole-body imager is presented in a companion paper.