In-beam PET with Pulse Shape Discrimination at a Clinical Cyclotron Facility

Positron emission tomography can yield in-vivo range information in hadron tumor therapy. Measurements are preferably done during the irradiation to minimize the loss of information due to physical decay and a metabolic transport of the nuclides. One challenge is the high number of background events due to prompt photons and neutron induced radiation. In this work, pulse shape discrimination has been applied to conventional Anger logic block detectors to enable an in-beam acquisition at a cyclotron generated beam. Images could be acquired with clinical dose rates in phantom experiments. This technique could pave the way towards more cost effective in-beam PET hardware.