Human Research PET

The ECAT High Resolution Research Tomograph (HRRT) is a dedicated human brain PET camera developed and commercialized by CTI/Siemens and installed at the BIC in 2007, with a design which enables the acquisition of images with high sensitivity and high spatial resolution, still remaining unmatched in 2020 by commercial human PET cameras. Only seventeen HRRT cameras have been installed around the world, playing a key role in many advances in the field of neuroscience due to their ability to resolve very small structures of the brain.

The camera has a bore opening of 35 cm diameter and a field of view (FoV) extending over 25 cm axially and 31.2 cm radially, making it possible to image at once the whole human head. Its excellent spatial resolution of 2.4 mm at the centre of the FoV is achived by the small size of its 119,808 crystals (2.1 x 2.1 x 10 mm3) distributed over 8 flat detector panels in an octogonal design and by the quadrant sharing photomultiplier tubes (PMT) design. With the aim of improving the camera's sensitivity, which reaches 4.3% at the centre of the FoV, and the isotropy of the spatial resolution across its FoV, through the determination of the depth of interation (DOI), the crystals are arranged in a dual layer configuration with a front layer of Lutetium Orthosilicate (LSO) and a back layer of Lutetium Yttrium Orthosilicate (LYSO).

Data is acquired in list mode, allowing post acquisition flexibility for temporal sampling of the dynamic studies and with the axial sampling of the oblique plans. The attenuation map is obtained with a fast acquisition in transmission using a Cs-137 source. List mode data are reconstructed into static images or time series of images using state-of-the-art image reconstruction methods with all the corrections for the standard degradation factors of PET image quality. The qualitative and quantitative images degradation induced by the subject's motion during the scan acquisition is compensated with an in-house motion correction technique.

Receptor Parametric Mapping

RPM is a package for Neuroreceptor Parametric Imaging Statistics. This incorporates both parameter and error estimation from a compartmental description of the radioligand. 

Head motion correction

Coregistration based method to realign time-frames to a target volume and remove the mismatches with the attenuation transmission. This approach is implemented for the PET cameras installed at BIC : HR+ and HRRT.

DOPAPET

DOPAPET is full-atomated pipeline for PET data to assess radioligand bindings to receptors in the brain regions segmented with MINC tools. A voxel-wise mapping can be performed for a precise detection of the bindings.