In-depth evaluation of TOF-PET detectors based on crystal arrays and the TOFPET2 ASIC

In recent years high efforts have been devoted to enhance spatial and temporal resolutions of PET detectors. However, accurately combining these two main features is, in most of the cases, challenging. Typically, a compromise has to be made between the number of readout channels, scintillator type and size, and photosensors arrangement if aiming for a good system performance, while keeping a moderate cost. In this work, we have studied several detector configurations for PET based on a set of 8x8 Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPMs) of 3x3 mm(2) active area, and LYSO crystal arrays with different pixel sizes. An exhaustive evaluation in terms of spatial, energy and timing resolution was made for all detector configurations. In some cases, when using pixel sizes different than SiPM active area, a significant amount of scintillation light may spread among several SiPMs. Therefore, we made use of a calibration method considering the different SiPM timing contributions. Best Detector Time Resolution (DTR) of 156 ps FWHM was measured when using 3x3 mm(2) crystal pixels directly coupled to the 3x3 mm(2) SiPMs. However, when using 1.5 mm crystal pixels with the same photosensor array, although we could clearly resolve all crystal pixels, an average DTR of 250 ps FWHM was achieved. We also shed light in this work on the timing dependency of the crystal pixel and photosensor alignment.