17th International Meeting on Fully Three-Dimensional Image Reconstruction in Radiology and Nuclear Medicine

 A new PET scanner design, the walk-through total-body PET, has recently been proposed. It consists of two flat, vertically placed, 74x106 cm^2 panels made up of monolithic BGO detectors. This new scanner design will offer a lower cost, high patient throughput alternative to existing total-body PET scanners. This study investigates the image reconstruction of the NEMA image quality phantom in two configurations of the scanner: fixed and rotating. In addition, two methods for CT-less attenuation correction in the system are explored: the use of a transmission source and estimation of the attenuation coefficients from the emission data itself. The fixed scanner configuration offers higher sensitivity, but streaking artifacts are observed due to the limited angle problem, which are solved in the rotating configuration. CT-less attenuation correction also proves to be feasible, with generally better image quality observed with the addition of a transmission source.