Simulation of low dose positron emission mammography scanner for global breast health applications

Positron emission mammography ("PEM") is a breast imaging modality that typically involves the administration of relatively high doses of radiotracer. In order to reduce tracer costs and consider PEM for global screening applications, it would be helpful to reduce the required amount of administered radiotracer so that patient dose would be comparable to conventional x-ray mammograms. We performed GATE Monte Carlo investigations of several possible camera configurations. Increasing the detector thickness from 10 to 30 mm, increasing the camera surface area from 5 x 20cm2 to 20 x 20cm2, and applying depth-ofinteraction information to increase the acceptance angle, increased the overall efficiency to radiation emitted from a breast cancer by a factor of 24 as compared to existing commercial systems