A novel depth-of-interaction block detector for positron emission tomography using a dichotomous orthogonal symmetry decoding concept

Conventionally, a dual-end depth-of-interaction (DOI) block detector readout requires two two-dimensional silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) arrays, one on top and one on the bottom, to define the XYZ positions. However, because both the top and bottom SiPM arrays are reading the same pixels, this creates information redundancy. We propose a dichotomous orthogonal symmetric (DOS) dual-end readout block detector design, which removes this redundancy by reducing the number of SiPMs and still achieves XY and DOI (Z) decoding for positron emission tomography (PET) block detector. Reflecting films are used within the block detector to channel photons going to the top of the block to go only in the X direction, and photons going to the bottom are channeled along the Y direction. Despite the unidirectional channeling on each end, the top readout provides both X and Y information using two one-dimensional SiPM arrays instead of a two-dimensional SiPM array; similarly, the bottom readout also provides both X and Y information with just two one-dimensional SiPM arrays. Thus, a total of four one-dimensional SiPM arrays (4 x N SiPMs) are used to decode the XYZ positions of the firing pixels instead of two two-dimensional SiPM arrays (2 x N x N SiPMs), reducing the number of SiPM arrays per block from 2N² to 4 N for PET/MR or PET/CT systems. Moreover, the SiPM arrays on one end can be replaced by two regular photomultiplier tubes (PMTs), so that a block needs only 2 N SiPMs + 2 half-PMTs; this hybrid-DOS DOI block detector can be used in PET/CT systems. Monte Carlo simulations were carried out to study the performance of our DOS DOI block detector design, including the XY-decoding quality, energy resolution, and DOI resolution. Both BGO and LSO scintillators were studied. We found that 4 mm pixels were well decoded for 5 x 5 BGO and 9 x 9 LSO arrays with 4 to 5 mm DOI resolution and 16-20% energy resolution. By adding light-channel decoding, we modified the DOS design to a high-resolution design, which resolved scintillator pixels smaller than the SiPM dimensions. Detector pixels of 2.4 mm were decoded for 8 x 8 BGO and 15 x 15 LSO arrays with 5 mm DOI resolution and 20-23% energy resolution. Time performance was also studied for the 8 x 8 BGO and 15 x 15 LSO HR-DOS arrays. The timing resolution for the corner and central crystals is 986 ± 122 ps and 1.89 ± 0.17 μs respectively with BGO, 137 ± 42 ps and 458 ± 67 ps respectively with LSO. Monte Carlo simulations with GATE/Geant4 demonstrated the feasibility of our DOS DOI block detector design. In conclusion, our novel design achieved good performance except the time performance while using fewer SiPMs and supporting electronic channels than the current non-DOI PET detectors. This novel design can significantly reduce the cost, heat, and readout complexity of DOI block detectors for PET/MR/CT systems that don't require the time-of-flight capability.