System sensitivity in preclinical small animal imaging

Preclinical small animal imaging is an important tool at the disposition of biological researchers. While the range of studies performed by non-invasive preclinical imaging is greatly varied, high sensitivity is of key importance in any biological experiment with molecular imaging probes. The technologies that are used to achieve high system sensitivity mostly focus on the use of large solid angles and dense scintillator materials. In this work, we investigate and discuss different preclinical Positron Emission Tomography system designs and the effects of these designs on the overall sensitivity. We focus our investigations in hypothetical system geometries and scintillator materials and perform Monte Carlo simulations. The results indicate that preclinical PET systems based on detector materials that have minimal intrinsic background and higher effective atomic number, might offer performance advantages for situations where the weakest signal possible needs to be detected.