3Dπ Meeting

Europe/Rome
Edificio Ex ISEF

Edificio Ex ISEF

Viale Francesco Crispi 7 67100 L'Aquila (AQ)
Cristiano Galbiati (GSSI)
Description

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a powerful functional imaging technique widely employed for medical diagnostics and research.  Although it is most extensively used in clinical oncology, PET is also used for brain diagnostics - e.g., in the study of Alzheimer’s disease - and cardiology.  PET scans can be used to diagnose Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, transient ischemic attack, ALS, Huntington’s disease, stroke, and other nervous system disorders.

In PET, a radioactive tracer that emits low-energy positrons is injected into the subject, and with an appropriate choice of active molecule, collects at sites of interest, typically those corresponding to the disease.

A recent innovation has been the introduction of time of-flight PET.  In TOF-PET, the number of ghost intersections, which scales as the square of the number of events, is greatly reduced since the timing information can be used to infer where along the line segment the annihilation occurred.

Traditional PET scanners employ inorganic crystal scintillators - e.g. LYSO - and photomultipliers (PMTs) for gamma-ray detection. In more recent designs, PMTs, which are bulky and expensive, have been replaced by silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), which reduce the size, cost, and complexity of the readout system. SiPMs have high quantum efficiency and excellent timing resolution.

Within the DarkSide collaboration a new approach to TOF-PET has been developed that is based on liquid argon (LAr) and SiPMs. LAr is an excellent scintillator.  At 40,000 photons/MeV its light yield is much larger than that of the scintillating crystals used in standard scanners.  Preliminary simulations indicate a resolution of 0.2 cm for the width 2 of the LOR and an overall 0.2-cm resolution following filtered back projection analysis; they also indicate the possibility of reaching sub-cm resolution along the LOR.  With these improvements, a better than tenfold reduction of the dose required for a PET scan would be possible.

A significant reduction of the high dose currently required for PET scans would open up new possibilities for the screening of cancer patients.  It would enable more frequent PET scans in adult patients and the adoption of PET scans for pediatric cancer patients.  It could even make PET brain scans of healthy patients possible, which would enable the study of accumulation of proteins and toxins suspected of being responsible for the onset of Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases.

On these bases, the L’Aquila workshop intends a threefold aim:

•    to highlight the state of the art;
•    to gather researchers from different disciplines and high-tech industries;
•    to launch an action plan.

Registration
Participants
    • 09:00 10:00
      Welcome Coffee 1h
    • 10:00 12:30
      Monday morning: Setting the stage
      Convener: Prof. Cristiano Galbiati (GSSI)
      • 10:00
        Welcome address 5m
        Speaker: Prof. Eugenio Coccia (GSSI)
      • 10:05
        Welcome address 5m
        Speaker: Prof. Paola Inverardi (Università de L'Aquila)
      • 10:10
        Welcome address 5m
        Speaker: Prof. Stefano Ragazzi (LNGS)
      • 10:15
        Welcome address 5m
        Speaker: Dr Giovanni Lolli (Regione Abruzzo)
      • 10:20
        Welcome address 5m
        Speaker: Dr Biondi Pierluigi (Comune de L'Aquila)
      • 10:25
        Welcome address 5m
        Speaker: Dr Speranza Falciano (Presidenza INFN)
      • 10:30
        Simulations of 3Dπ performance and presentation of white paper 1h
        Speaker: Prof. Andrew Renshaw (University of Houston)
      • 11:30
        The FBK SiPMs 30m
        Speaker: Dr Alberto Gola (FBK)
      • 12:00
        LFoundry and its technology 30m
        Speaker: Dr Sergio Galbiati (LFoundry)
    • 12:30 14:30
      Lunch Break 2h
    • 14:30 16:30
      Monday Afternoon: the sensors
      Convener: Prof. Ivan De Mitri (GSSI)
      • 14:30
        The large scale SiPM production at LFoundry 30m
        Speaker: Dr Bez Roberto (LFoundry)
      • 15:00
        Readout of SiPMs: physics principles and insights 30m
        Speaker: Dr Alessandro Razeto (LNGS)
      • 15:30
        The DarkSide photodetector modules and their large scale production 30m
        Speaker: Dr Eugenio Scapparone (INFN Bologna)
      • 16:00
        Nuova Officina Assergi at LNGS 30m
        Speaker: Dr Aldo Ianni (LNGS)
    • 16:30 17:00
      Coffe break 30m
    • 17:00 18:30
      Monday evening: the view from the clinical world
      Convener: Dr Aldo Ianni (LNGS)
      • 17:00
        Current application of PET imaging in Clinical Neurology 30m
        Speaker: Prof. Marco Onofrj (UniCh)
      • 17:30
        Nanotechnology for precision medicine 30m
        Speaker: Prof. Paolo Decuzzi (IIT)
      • 18:00
        Future PET benchmarks for brain scanning 30m
    • 18:30 20:00
      Evening break 1h 30m
    • 20:00 22:30
      Dinner 2h 30m

      Dinner at "Il Dragoncello". Within walking distance from GSSI.
      Locate at:
      Via Fabio Cannella 4
      67100 L'Aquila AQ
      Italia

    • 09:00 11:00
      Tuesday morning: Elements of action plan
      Convener: Dr Alessandro Razeto (LNGS)
      • 09:00
        Cryogenics 30m
        Speaker: Dr Hanguo Wang (UCLA)
      • 09:30
        ASICs for SiPMs readout 30m
        Speakers: Dr Angelo Rivetti (INFN Torino), Dr Manuel Da Rocha Rolo (INFN Torino)
      • 10:00
        Imaging techniques 30m
        Speaker: Prof. Giuseppe Vicidomini (IIT)
      • 10:30
        PET-specific needs for SiPMs readout 30m
        Speaker: Prof. Daniel Marlow (Princeton University (US))
    • 11:00 11:30
      Coffee break 30m
    • 11:30 13:30
      Tuesday late morning: Action plan
      Conveners: Prof. Daniel Marlow (Princeton University (US)), Prof. Marco Pallavicini (INFN Genova)
      • 11:30
        Brainstorming on action plan 1h 30m
      • 13:00
        Conclusions 30m