INNOVATIONS IN RADIATION DETECTORS AND SYSTEMS FOR POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY

Simon R. Cherry, Ph.D.
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Department of Radiology
University of California, Davis, USA

Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging is an important clinical tool for staging and monitoring treatment response in cancer patients and has a broad range of other diagnostic and research applications. Roughly 10 million diagnostic PET scans are performed worldwide, annually and the number is growing quite rapidly.

Advances in radiation detector technology have led to new generations of PET systems that demonstrate a quantum leap in imaging performance, and in doing so open new opportunities for the application of PET in biomedical research and in the clinic. State-of-the-art total body and brain PET scanners will be reviewed.

Current innovations in radiation detector research offer the prospect of future opportunities to further improve the performance of PET scanners, with a specific focus on time-of-flight performance. Examples include fast timing from dense room-temperature semiconductors and the use of promptCherenkov luminescence as a fast-timing trigger. The first steps towards detectors capable of real-time and reconstruction-free imaging of positron-labeled radiopharmaceuticals will be presented. Such systems would approach the theoretical performance limits for imaging radiotracers and permit novel imaging geometries, providing an exquisitely sensitive and quantitative imaging tool for biomedical research in human subjects.



BIO

Simon R. Cherry, Ph.D. received his B.Sc.(Hons) in Physics with Astronomy from University College London in 1986 and a Ph.D. in Medical Physics from the Institute of Cancer Research, University of London in 1989. In 1993, he became a faculty member in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA. Simon joined UC Davis in 2001, and is currently Distinguished Research Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology.

Simon’s research interests center around biomedical imaging. His major accomplishments have been in developing systems for positron emission tomography, for example as co-leader of the EXPLORER consortium which developed the world’s first total-body PET scanner. He also has contributed to detector technology innovations for PET, conducted early biomedical studies using Cerenkovluminescence, and developed the first proof-of-concept hybrid PET/MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) systems.

Simon is an elected fellow of six professional societies and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Inventors. He has received several international awards including the Society of nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Cassen Prize in 2022. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Physics in Medicine and Biology from 2011-2020. Simon is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, review articles and book chapters in the field of biomedical imaging. He is also lead author of the widely-used textbook “Physics in Nuclear Medicine”.