SMRC Hosts Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Seminar
On October 4, 2006, the Scintillation Materials Research Center (SMRC) hosted a seminar by Dr. William Moses of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Dr. Moses’ presentation--"Scintillator Requirements for Medical Imaging"--focused on positron emission tomography (PET), a nuclear medical imaging technique that is able to image a number of diseases, notably in oncology, cardiology, and neurology. Patients are injected with a drug that is labeled with a positron emitting isotope that accumulates in diseased tissue, and the 511 keV gamma rays from positron annihilation are then imaged. The detectors used to image the gamma rays are usually based on dense, inorganic scintillators. The presentation gave a brief overview of PET, described the detectors used to image the gamma radiation from positron annihilation, looked at how the properties of the scintillators used in these detectors affect the imaging performance, and discussed the potential for future advances in scintillators for PET.