Development of ''Eminence-B'' whole-body positron emission tomographic system

This report refers to our newly developed ''Eminence-B'' high-efficiency, whole-body positron emission tomographic system. This new system incorporates three to five layers of detector rings, each consisting of 88 detector blocks, and enables the effective axial view to be selected in three steps of 156 mm, 208 mm, and 260 mm. Each detector block consists of 48 BGO (Bi4Ge3O12) crystals, 3.5 x 6.25 x 30 mm in size, and ensures a transverse spatial resolution (full width half maximum (FWHM)) of 4.5 mm at the position 1 cm away from axis. Also, this system combines a 24-slice to 40-slice PET scanner with a 6-slice transmission scanner, so that it permits 3-dimensional continuous emission scanning and spiral transmission scanning, simultaneously. The new acquisition mode utilized in this system has been named SYNETRAC (SYNchronized Emission and TRAnsmission Continuous 3-dimensional acquisition). (author)