Evaluation of a dual-panel PET camera design to breast cancer imaging.

We are developing a novel, portable dual-panel positron emission tomography (PET) camera dedicated to breast cancer imaging. With a sensitive area of approximately 150 cm(2), this camera is based on arrays of lutetium oxyorthosilicate (LSO) crystals (1x1x3 mm(3)) coupled to 11x11-mm(2) position-sensitive avalanche photodiodes (PSAPD). GATE open source software was used to perform Monte Carlo simulations to optimize the parameters for the camera design.