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This paper studies the use of Neural Networks (NNs) for estimating the position of impinging photons in gamma ray detector modules for PET cameras based on continuous scintillators and Multi-Anode Photomultiplier Tubes (MA-PMTs). The detector under study is composed of a 49 × 49 × 10 mm³ continuous slab of LSO coupled to a flat panel 118500 MA-PMT. Four digitized signals from a charge division circuit, which collects currents from the 8 × 8 anode matrix of the photomultiplier, are used as inputs to the NN, thus reducing drastically the number of electronic channels required. We have simulated the computation of the position for 511 keV gamma photons impacting perpendicularly to the detector surface. Thus, we have performed a thorough analysis of the NN architecture and training procedures in order to achieve the best results in terms of spatial resolution and bias correction. Results obtained using GEANT4 simulation toolkit show a resolution of 1.3 mm/1.9 mm FWHM at the center/edge of the detector and less than 1 mm of systematic error in the position near the edges of the scintillator. The results confirm that NNs can partially model and correct the non-uniform detector response using only the position-weighted signals from a simple 2D DPC circuit. Linearity degradation for oblique incidence is also investigated. Finally, the NN can be implemented in hardware for parallel real time corrected Line-of-Response (LOR) estimation. Results on resources occupancy and throughput in FPGA are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have studied a new and inexpensive method of measuring the depth of interaction (DOI) in γ-ray detectors with large-sized scintillation crystals. This method takes advantage of the strong correlation between the width of the undisturbed light- distribution in continuous crystals and the γ-ray's DOI. In order to quantify the dependence of the distribution's width with respect to the DOI, we first studied an analytical model of the light-distribution and tested it by means of Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of the light transport inside the crystal. Further we present an inexpensive modification of the commonly used charge division circuit that allows analog and instantaneous computation of the light-distribution's second moment without affecting the determination of the centroid. This redesigned resistor network is based on the position-sensitive proportional counter (DPC) readout and allows, together with position sensitive photo-detectors, the additional measurement of the light-distribution's standard-deviation σ. We tested the proposed circuit using the design-tool OrCAD and found the signal sufficiently large for digitalization. Finally, we conducted MC simulations of a realistic Positron Emission Tomography (PET) detector module setup that mimic a continuous Lu₂ SiO5 : Ce3+ (LSO) crystal of dimensions 40 × 40 × 10 mm³ together with the new large area position-sensitive photo multiplier tube (PSPMT) H8500 from Hamamatsu. The influence of Compton scattering on the DOI determination was also estimated by MC simulations. Altogether, we obtained ≲ 5 mm DOI resolution. PACS: 87.57.Ce, 87.58.Fg, 87.62.+n, 07.85.-m [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]