Enhanced Data Analysis For Improved Energy Resolution Of A Czt-Based Pet System

Cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detectors are highly promising for advanced PET imaging due to their high energy and spatial resolution. In this contribution, an improved data analysis is suggested for the small animal PET system currently under construction at Stanford. Improved energy resolution in positron emission tomography (PET) helps to exclude scattered events and is necessary for new strategies to raise sensitivity. The analysis method in this study uses two different approaches where the first approach is an automated regulation process to determine appropriate fit parameters for each anode channel in the detector. The second approach identifies readout channels with over-corrections and changes the data analysis chain to avoid over-corrections. Following the measured data set in this analysis, the two approaches are make a relative improvement of the energy resolution by 15% and 0.1%, respectively, when a reasonable minimal fit range of 40 keV is set. This equates to an absolute improvement from 8.54% to 7.25% FWHM at 511 keV for a combined processing.