Application of the compress sensing theory for improvement of the TOF resolution in a novel J-PET instrument

Positron emission tomography (PET) [1] is currently one of the most perspective techniques in the fi eld of medical imaging. PET is based on the fact that the electron and positron annihilate and their mass is converted to energy in the form of two gamma quanta fl ying in the opposite directions. The two gamma quanta registered in coincidence defi ne a line referred to as line of response (LOR). The image of distribution of the radionuclide is obtained from the high statistics sample of reconstructed LORs. In time of fl ight (TOF) PET systems [2, 3], the applied detectors measure the difference in the arrival time of the two gamma rays that enables to shorten signifi cantly a range along the LOR used for the reconstruction of the image. Currently, all commercial PET devices use inorganic scintillator materials, usually lutetium oxyorthosilicate (LSO) or lutetium-yttrium oxyorthosilicate (LYSO) crystals, as radiation detectors. These are characterized by relatively long rise and decay times of the order of tens of nanoseconds. The J-PET collaboration investigates a possibility of construction of a PET scanner from plastic scintillators, which would allow for simultaneous imaging of the whole human body. The J-PET chamber is built out from long strips forming the cylinder [4, 5]. Light signals from each strip are converted into electrical Application of the compress sensing theory for improvement of the TOF resolution in a novel J-PET instrument Lech Raczyński, Paweł Moskal, Paweł Kowalski, Wojciech Wiślicki, Tomasz Bednarski, Piotr Białas, Eryk Czerwiński, Aleksander Gajos, Łukasz Kapłon, Andrzej Kochanowski, Grzegorz Korcyl, Jakub Kowal, Tomasz Kozik, Wojciech Krzemień, Ewelina Kubicz, Szymon Niedźwiecki, Marek Pałka, Zbigniew Rudy, Piotr Salabura, Neha Gupta-Sharma, Michał Silarski, Artur Słomski, Jerzy Smyrski, Adam Strzelecki, Anna Wieczorek, Marcin Zieliński, Natalia Zoń