Study of a high-resolution PET system using a silicon detector probe. 
A high-resolution silicon detector probe, in coincidence with a conventional PET scanner, is expected to provide images of higher quality than those achievable using the scanner alone.  Spatial resolution should improve due to the finer pixelization of the probe detector, while increased sensitivity in the probe vicinity is expected to decrease noise.  A PET-probe prototype is being developed utilizing this principle.  The system includes a probe consisting of ten layers of silicon detectors, each a 80 × 52 array of 1 × 1 × 1 mm(3) pixels, to be operated in coincidence with a modern clinical PET scanner.  Detailed simulation studies of this system have been performed to assess the effect of the additional probe information on the quality of the reconstructed images.  A grid of point sources was simulated to study the contribution of the probe to the system resolution at different locations over the field of view (FOV).  A resolution phantom was used to demonstrate the effect on image resolution for two probe positions.  A homogeneous source distribution with hot and cold regions was used to demonstrate that the localized improvement in resolution does not come at the expense of the overall quality of the image.  Since the improvement is constrained to an area close to the probe, breast imaging is proposed as a potential application for the novel geometry.  In this sense, a simplified breast phantom, adjacent to heart and torso compartments, was simulated and the effect of the probe on lesion detectability, through measurements of the local contrast recovery coefficient-to-noise ratio (CNR), was observed.  The list-mode ML-EM algorithm was used for image reconstruction in all cases.  As expected, the point spread function of the PET-probe system was found to be non-isotropic and vary with position, offering improvement in specific regions.  Increase in resolution, of factors of up to 2, was observed in the region close to the probe.  Images of the resolution phantom showed visible improvement in resolution when including the probe in the simulations.  The image quality study demonstrated that contrast and spill-over ratio in other areas of the FOV were not sacrificed for this enhancement.  The CNR study performed on the breast phantom indicates increased lesion detectability provided by the probe.