Preliminary study for the development of a tweezers-type coincidence detector for tumor detection

We have conducted a preliminary study for development of a tweezer-type coincidence detector for tumor detection in procedures such as FDG-guided surgery. The detector consists of a pair of LSO scintillators, optical fibers, a pair of photo-multiplier tubes (PMTs), and a coincidence circuit. Because the LSO scintillators are located on the tips of tweezers, a target organ such as a lymph node or the colon can be positioned between them. The size of a single LSO was 3.7 mm×3.7 mm×10 mm, and the scintillation photons are transferred to the PMTs via 2-mm-diameter, 1-m long optical fibers. The results show that the light loss due to the fiber was significant but there was sufficient light to observe the photo-peak of the 511-keV gamma photons. Sensitivity response function perpendicular to the detector has a full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 2.5 mm, while that parallel to the detector has a FWHM of 5.5 mm. Background counts due to the natural radioisotope in ¹⁷⁶Lu can be observed when the distance between these two scintillators is small. Results also show that the absolute sensitivity was 0.057% at the center of the detector when the two LSOs were 10 mm apart and that the optical fiber was insensitive to bending up to a radius of 10 cm. From these results, we conclude that the proposed tweezers-type coincidence detector could be some interest for tumor detection using FDG, such as that in radio-guided surgery.