Validation of a GATE model for the simulation of the Siemens biographTM 6 PET scanner

The recently developed Geant4 Application for Tomographic Emission (GATE) toolkit is a Monte Carlo simulation platform developed for PET and SPECT simulations and is freely distributed by the OpenGATE collaboration. GATE provides the ability of modelling time-dependent phenomena, such as geometry element movements and source decay kinetics, allowing the simulation of time curves under realistic acquisition conditions. The purpose of this paper was to validate a GATE model for the simulation of the Siemens PET BiographTM 6 scanner. This three-dimensional GATE model simulated 24336 LSO (Lutetium Oxyorthosilicate) detectors grouped into 144 blocks in accordance with the vendor's specifications. GATE results were compared with experimental data, obtained in accordance with the NEMA NU 2-2001 performance measurement protocol. The scatter phantom used by this protocol was also modelled within GATE, allowing us to simulate scatter fraction and count rate performance measurements