Iodine-124 quantitative positron emission tomography imaging for small animal

Iodine-124 PET quantitative imaging requires the optimisation of acquisition parameters and of corrections adapted to the complex nature of the emission spectrum of that isotope. A first experimental approach establishes the performance of the Inveon, Siemens PET system dedicated to small animal and highlights the consequences of iodine-124 physical properties on images. To adapt or develop correction methods for various biases demonstrated experimentally, the PET camera Inveon was modelled with the Monte-Carlo simulation platform, GATE. Model validation was conducted by comparing simulated and experimental performances obtained for fluorine-18 and iodine-124. The simulation of test object placed in the Inveon system model determined the correction method most suitable for singles photons emitted by iodine-124. All optimisations performed on test objects of simple geometric shapes were tested in the case of small animal. The results show that some parameters optimised on the test objects did not influence the quantification of activity in the realistic case of a mouse injected with iodine-124. This thesis demonstrates the possibility of quantification by PET imaging of the distribution of monoclonal antibodies labelled with iodine-124 injected into a mouse. (author)