The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 28, 2015
Filed:
Jul. 02, 2012
Debora Henseler, Erlangen, DE;
Ronald Grazioso, Knoxville, TN (US);
Nan Zhang, Knoxville, TN (US);
Matthias J. Schmand, Lenoir City, TN (US);
Sanghee Cho, Knoxville, TN (US);
Debora Henseler, Erlangen, DE;
Ronald Grazioso, Knoxville, TN (US);
Nan Zhang, Knoxville, TN (US);
Matthias J. Schmand, Lenoir City, TN (US);
Sanghee Cho, Knoxville, TN (US);
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft, Munich, DE;
Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc., Malvern, PA (US);
Abstract
A system and method are provided for determining the onset of gamma interactions for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging more accurately than with existing techniques. The timing of a sequence of primary trigger events is obtained and used to determine a weighted combination, which mixes the timing information from the various primary trigger events to compute an overall event trigger timing with improved time resolution. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the invention improves time resolution by approximately 10% over state-of-the-art methods. This improved time resolution directly benefits the imaging performance of the PET scanner, especially in time-of-flight (TOF) mode, where a high time resolution directly translates to a reduction in image noise at the same dose—or, alternatively, a reduction of dose to the patient or scan time for the same image quality.