Department Publications

Intraoperative PET-laparoscope system has been proposed to locate lymph node metastasis during gastric cancer surgery. The proposed system consists of an external detector array connected to a patient’s surgical bed and a movable detector probe which is inserted into the patient’s stomach along with a laparoscope. In this study a prototype detector for the PET-laparoscope system is presented with a pixelated movable detector probe tracked by an optical tracking system. Detector prototype reconstructed images of a 22 Na source with 3 mm spatial resolution in X (coronal) and Z (longitudinal) directions in a 2 min scan. The use of the pixelated multi-layer movable detector probe improved the spatial resolution of the system.

The PET-laparoscope system has been proposed to diagnose lymph node metastases intraoperatively in gastric cancer surgeries. The system uses two detector units, a fixed detector array and a movable detector probe to acquire PET images. The detector probe can be inserted into a patient’s stomach through laparoscopic ports. A surgeon can move the detector inside the patient’s body but the movement is limited. In this study the system was evaluated with an abdomen phantom so that the probe movement was realistic. Moreover, performance of an MLEM algorithm was investigated for the PET-laparoscope system. Experiments with the abdomen phantom confirmed that the system performs well when the probe movement is similar to that achievable during a laparoscopic surgery. MLEM algorithm provided better images. Image artifacts were reduced and the spatial resolution in lateral directions were better …