THE PHYSICS OF PET
When PET is clinically applied a radio-pharmaceutical, which emits
positrons, the anti-particle of electrons, is administered to the patient.
When positrons are emitted, they quickly annihilate with electrons in the
patient’s body. This releases two gamma rays which are detected by scintillators,
pin-pointing where annihilation took place applying incoincidence measurement.
Scintillator emits light, which is moved into electric signal and finally
into digital form. The result is a digital image, which can be filtered,
enchanced etc. PET machine tells doctors exactly where the radio-pharmaceutical
ends up in the body, allowing them to find out whether everything is working
in the body as it should.
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