Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a nuclear medical imaging procedure which produces a three dimensional image of functional processes within the body. This imaging procedure is a important and powerful tool in oncology to detect cancer, neurology to fight Alzheimer, cardiology to study heart disease and pharmacology to aid in the development of new drugs.
To perform a PET scan, Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), or other radionuclide tracers, are introduced into the blood stream and are incorporated into the cells under investigation. FDG is a radioisotope which decays rapidly over time. As it decays it emits a positron which interacts with electrons in the body given off pairs of high energy photons which have an energy of 511keV. To detect these pairs of high energy photons, scintillating crystals such as BGO, LSO and LYSO are used to convert the photons to visible light. Light detectors such as sensL's Silicon Photomultipliers (SPM) are used to detect and measure the visible photons that are emitted from the scintillating crystals. By measuring the coincidence of the photons with a high degree of accuracy, it is possible to build a picture of the cancer or cells under investigation.
PET is about detecting and imaging inside animals and humans, therefore PET systems are required to be large enough to fit around the patient of interest. sensL's high uniformity SPMArrays, stable operating voltage, packaging and electronic readout solutions provide an ideal base from which to bring to market the latest generation PET systems.
Benefits of SensL technology
Proven PET performance: sensL SPM detectors are matched for the readout of PET systems based on LYSO.
Enables digital PET: The SensL SPM detector allows for fully digital PET.
Large volume packaging solutions: SensL provides low cost high volume packaging solutions.
Simple readout electronics: SensL provide electronic solutions to our customers decreasing system design time.
Mobile systems possible: The SensL SPM is reliable and ideal for systems which need to be compact and portable.
What are the relevant applications?
Full body human PET – Replacement of the vacuum tube based PMT detector with SensL SPM technology provides a scalable system which allows for fully digital PET to be developed. SensL’s array detector and readout solutions provide customers with the ability to integrate solid-state detectors into their next generation PET systems and secure their product roadmap for the future as the market moves from vacuum tube technology to solid-state.
Preclinical PET – Small animal PET systems are compact, flexible in pixel design and able to be coupled into high resolution systems. The SensL SPMArray provides this. SensL works directly with our customers to provide a solution suited to the application.
Organ Specific PET – The SensL SPMArray is ideal for use in organ specific systems. Often these systems are miniature in size and require low cost for the markets in which they are entering. sensL provides the low cost and compact SPMArray in a variety of packaging formats which allows these systems to be developed.
in-vivo PET – SensL's SPMArray technology is a low voltage detector operating at user safe voltages. The sensL SPM detector can be integrated directly onto miniature electronic boards for use with in-vivo applications.
PET/MRI – Please see our specific section on using sensL detectors in PET/MRI.
Who uses the product?
OEM Customers
Our OEM customers benefit from working with sensL in several key areas. The first of these is the performance, reliability and uniformity of the core sensL SPM low light detector. This provides an ideal base from which to design and build production systems. Secondly our OEM customers gain from the knowledge in packaging and electronics that sensL have pioneered and bring to our PET customers. These include packaging solutions for demanding PET applications coupled with electronics and readout expertise and off the shelf solutions to decrease customer time to market.
Research Customers
sensL works closely with our research customers to provide them with the latest technology and ease the adoption of our low light detector technology into their research labs. We seek to provide our research customers with a modular solution which solves their low light detection challenges and allows them to focus on their research. For example, sensL are founding members of openPET which seeks to provide a open source PET electronics platform from which to design and build PET systems. This helps to speed our research customers ability to move from concept to working system. In addition to this, sensL provides pathways for our research customers to easily migrate from laboratory prototype to a commercial system when using sensL solutions.