Line of research: RPC-based Positron Emission Tomography
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Project abstract:
The project is led by Prof. Paulo Fonte and aims at developing two positron emission tomography (PET)
systems. One will be dedicated to
very-high resolution imaging of small animals,
and one should allow for
whole-body, single-bed human time-of-flight PET.
The project is based on the extension to nuclear medicine
of detector technology that is well established in high energy physics:
resistive plate chambers (RPC).
Collaborating institutions:
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LIP -
Laboratório de Instrumentação e Física Experimental de Partículas
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UC -
University of Coimbra, namely its
Physics Department, together with
ICNAS
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ISEC -
Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Coimbra
Some publications/presentations:
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P. Martins, A. Blanco, P. Crespo, M.F. Ferreira Marques,
R. Ferreira Marques, P.M. Gordo, M. Kajetanowicz,
G. Korcyl, L. Lopes, J. Michel, M. Palka, M. Traxler, P. Fonte,
Achieving 0.4-mm FWHM spatial resolution with an
RPC-based small-animal PET prototype,
2013 IEEE Nucl. Sci. Symp. & Med. Imag. Conf. (NSS/MIC),
Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2013, Seoul, South Korea
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P. Crespo, A. Blanco, M. Couceiro, N.C. Ferreira, R. Ferreira Marques,
L. Lopes, P. Martins, P. Fonte,
Positron emission tomography based on resistive plate chambers,
Symposium on Applied Nuclear Physics and Innovative
Technologies, University of Cracow, Jun. 3-6, 2013
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P. Crespo, A. Blanco, M. Couceiro, N.C. Ferreira, L. Lopes, P. Martins,
R. Ferreira Marques, P. Fonte,
Resistive plate chambers in positron emission tomography,
Eur. Phys. J. Plus 128:7 (2013) 73
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P. Martins, M. Couceiro, N.C. Ferreira, R. Ferreira Marques,
P. Fonte, L. Mendes, P. Crespo,
On lesion detectability by means of 300 ps-FWHM TOF whole-body RPC-PET:
an experiment-based simulation study,
In Conf. Records 2012 IEEE Nucl. Sci. Symp. & Med. Imag. Conf. (NSS/MIC),
Anaheim, CA, USA, Oct. 2012, 2440-2444
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P. Martins, P. Crespo, R. Ferreira Marques, M. Kajetanowicz,
G. Korcyl, L. Lopes, J. Michel, M. Palka, M. Traxler, P. Fonte,
Experimental sub-millimeter resolution with a small-animal RPC-PET
prototype,
In Conf. Records 2012 IEEE Nucl. Sci. Symp. & Med. Imag. Conf. (NSS/MIC),
Anaheim, CA, USA, Oct. 2012, pp. 3760-3764
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M. Couceiro, P. Crespo, R. Ferreira Marques, P. Fonte,
Scatter fraction, count rates, and noise equivalent count
rate of an RPC-PET TOF system: simulation study following
the NEMA NU2-2001 standards,
In Conf. Records 2012 IEEE Nucl. Sci. Symp. & Med. Imag. Conf. (NSS/MIC),
Anaheim, CA, USA, Oct. 2012, pp. 2651-2660
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P. Crespo, J. Reis, M. Couceiro, A. Blanco, N.C. Ferreira,
R. Ferreira Marques, P. Martins, P. Fonte,
Whole-body single-bed time-of-flight RPC-PET:
simulation of axial and planar sensitivities with NEMA and
anthropomorphic phantoms,
IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci 59 (2012) 520-529
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M. Couceiro, P. Crespo, L. Mendes, N. Ferreira,
R. Ferreira Marques, P. Fonte,
Spatial resolution of human RPC-PET system,
Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 661 (2012) 5156-5158
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P. Martins, A. Blanco, F. Caramelo, M. Couceiro, N.C. Ferreira,
R. Ferreira Marques, P. Fonte, L. Mendes, P. Crespo,
A direct time-of-flight reconstruction for whole-body single-bed
RPC-PET: results from lesion and anthropomorphic simulated data,
In Conf. Records 2011 IEEE Nucl. Sci. Symp. & Med. Imag. Conf. (NSS/MIC),
Oct. 23-29, 2011, pp. 2610-2616
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A. Blanco, M. Couceiro, P. Crespo, N.C. Ferreira,
R. Ferreira Marques, P. Fonte, L. Lopes, J.A. Neves,
Efficiency of RPC detectors for whole-body human TOF-PET,
Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A. 602 (2009) 780-783