Acceptance and routine tests for a small animal PET scanner

The main objective of this work was to describe the quality control procedures used to characterize a pre-clinical small animal PET scanner (GE eXplore Vista). These procedures consist of a set of acceptance tests in order to evaluate the physical performance of the scanner and a set of routine tests performed on a daily or weekly basis. The eXplore Vista is a fully 3D PET scanner consisting in 36 detector blocks arranged in two rings. Each detector module of the scanner is a block of 169 phoswich elements arranged in a 13x13 array. Each element is 1.45 mm x 1.45 mm x 15 mm in size and composed of two scintillator crystals: a Lutetium Yttrium Orthosilicate (LYSO) and a Gadolinium Orthosilicate (GSO) crystal optically glued together. The GSO element is also optically glued to a position sensitive photomultiplier (PSPMT). The transaxial field of view (FOV) is equal to 6 cm and the axial FOV is equal to 4.6 cm