During the last 3 decades, PET has become a standard-of-care imaging technique used in the management of cancer and in the characterization of neurologic disorders and cardiovascular disease. It has also emerged as a prominent molecular imaging method to study the basic biologic pathways of disease in rodent models. This review describes the basics of PET detectors, including a detailed description of indirect and direct 511-keV photon detection methods. We will also cover key detector performance parameters and describe detector instrumentation advances during the last decade.
Keywords: CTR; PET; coincidence time resolution; scintillation detectors; semiconductor detectors; spatial and energy resolution.
© 2022 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.