PeneloPET, a Monte Carlo PET simulation tool based on PENELOPE: features and validation

Monte Carlo simulations play an important role in positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, as an essential tool for the research and development of new scanners and for advanced image reconstruction. PeneloPET, a PET-dedicated Monte Carlo tool, is presented and validated in this work. PeneloPET is based on PENELOPE, a Monte Carlo code for the simulation of the transport in matter of electrons, positrons and photons, with energies from a few hundred eV to 1 GeV. PENELOPE is robust, fast and very accurate, but it may be unfriendly to people not acquainted with the FORTRAN programming language. PeneloPET is an easy-to-use application which allows comprehensive simulations of PET systems within PENELOPE. Complex and realistic simulations can be set by modifying a few simple input text files. Different levels of output data are available for analysis, from sinogram and lines-of-response (LORs) histogramming to fully detailed list mode. These data can be further exploited with the preferred programming language, including ROOT. PeneloPET simulates PET systems based on crystal array blocks coupled to photodetectors and allows the user to define radioactive sources, detectors, shielding and other parts of the scanner. The acquisition chain is simulated in high level detail; for instance, the electronic processing can include pile-up rejection mechanisms and time stamping of events, if desired. This paper describes PeneloPET and shows the results of extensive validations and comparisons of simulations against real measurements from commercial acquisition systems. PeneloPET is being extensively employed to improve the image quality of commercial PET systems and for the development of new onesWe acknowledge support from MEC (FPA2007-07393), CDTEAM (CENIT-Ingenio 2010) Ministerio de Industria, Spain, CPAN (Consolider-Ingenio 2010) CSPD-2007-00042 projects and the RECAVA-RETIC network. Part of the computations of this work were done at the ‘High Capacity Cluster for Physical Techniques’ of the Faculty for Physical Sciences of the UCM, funded in part by the UE under the FEDER program and in part by UCM. J L Herraiz and E Vicente acknowledge support from UCM-FPU and CSIC-JAE pre-doctoral fellowshipsPublicad