GE Discovery PET/CT

The GE Discovery MI PET-CT scanner within our HDB facility enables high-resolution, bleeding edge research and clinical imaging capabilities. The PET detector material is a lutetium-based scintillator comprised of 19,584 total crystals apportioned into 544 blocks in 36 rings. Each crystal measures 3.95 × 5.3 × 25 mm³. The detectors themselves are silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) affixed to application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which provide fully digital acquisitions at much higher sensitivities than traditional analog photomultiplier tubes (PMTs). With a NEMA sensitivity of 13.7cps/kBq and a timing resolution of 385ps that enables ultra-low noise reconstructions with time-of-flight techniques, the Discovery MI achieves previously unattainable image quality. Its axial resolution is 4.8mm at 1cm from FOV center, and its transaxial resolution is 4.5mm at 10cm. The full suite of proprietary GE PET quantitation and motion artifact reduction technology is available on the scanner, including Q.Clear, Q.Freeze, and Q.Static. The CT provides a 50cm diagnostic FOV which can expand to 70cm for attenuation correction. A nominal helical pitch of 0.516 to 1.531 and a cardiac pitch of 0.16 to 0.35, allow for large axial coverage with minimal gantry rotations at low dose. The maximum X-ray power is 72kW with tube current ranging from 10 to 600mA in 5mA increments. Available scan modes include standard axial, helical, and cine techniques. Iterative image reconstructions obtain the highest resolution with the lowest possible X-ray dose.