ABSTRACT
Phantom ............................................................................................ 298 11.3.9 VIP Image Reconstruction Algorithms ............................................ 298
11.4 Positron Emission Mammography with VIP ................................................299 11.4.1 VIP PEM Design ..............................................................................299 11.4.2 Evaluation of Imaging Performance ................................................. 301
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a fundamental nuclear medicine diagnostic tool for molecular imaging. Although the first time a PET scanner was used for oncology was in 1982 [1], it took a long time before PET could be used as a full-fledged operational diagnostic device. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the lack of interest of the radiology community made it difficult to establish a successful market for PET and companies that fabricated PET devices had difficulties in surviving. Two of the main obstacles were the need to have a cyclotron machine and a team to make the radiotraces in situ, and to have a image quality comparable to the emerging CT and later MRI techniques. A breakthrough along this path was the development of the new radiotracer 2-deoxy-2-(18F)fluoro-D-glucose (18F-FDG) containing the positron-emitting radioactive isotope 18F with a long lifetime [2,3] and the introduction of the dual imaging PET + CT technique by T. Beyer et al. [4]. With the introduction of 18F-FDG, it became possible to acquire radiotracers from dedicated centers. Since 18F-FDG has a relatively long lifetime of 90 min, it is possible to transport it within a range of a city, and this has helped in boosting the PET market.
