The Current Status of a Non-Invasive Arterial Monitor under Development

Abstract

A non-invasive arterial monitor (NIAM) is being developed as an alternative to invasive arterial sampling to measure the input function of radiotracer uptake in PET patients. NIAM consists of dual Bismuth Germanate (BGO)-block detectors. The output was digitized at 500 MHz, and then processed to generate energy, timing and position information. System matrices were calculated for a range of geometries, allowing iterative reconstruction of tomographic images. Countrate efficiency was measured as 4.8cps/(kBq/ml) and countrate linearity was confirmed up to 330kBq/ml. The coincidence time resolution was measured using two techniques; a digital Constant Fraction Discriminator (CFD) and a Parametr..