Figure 17.

Monte Carlo simulation results for a compressed breast placed between two PET detectors. Schematic on left shows the breast between the two yellow shaded detectors. The breast model shown here has anatomical structures representing varying tissue types that appear identical in a PET image. The reconstructed images on the right show the transverse, sagittal, and coronal view of reconstructed breast using 10 ps and 300 ps timing resolution as well as non-TOF reconstruction. The distortion of the general breast shape along the y-direction is greatly reduced with improved timing resolution. The four 5 mm diameter lesion seen in the transverse image are also better visualized with improved timing resolution leading to improved contrast. All images are scaled to the maximum pixel value in the image. Simulated detector used 1.5 × 1.5 × 15 mm³ LYSO crystals without any DOI information.