Why antimatter matters (especially for PET)
Conference Publication ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
[Extract] In positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, a radiopharmaceutical injected into the body preferentially seeks abnormalities (e.g., regions of high metabolic activity), where high energy anti-matter particles called positrons are emitted. These positrons then slow down and annihilate with electrons in the body tissue, producing two back-to-back gamma rays with directions governed by Newton's laws. and energies prescribed by Einstein's mass-energy equivalence relation, E=mc². The gamma radiation is used to form an image of the abnormality but, since the points of emission of the positron and the gamma rays respectively are displaces, the image is blurred. In order to come to terms with this fundamental limitation on resolution of PET, it is necessary to model the physics of positrons in soft biological tissue using the methods of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, and incorporating recently measured positron-molecule scattering cross sections.
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Fourteenth Biennial Conference of the Australian Association of von Humboldt Fellows
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978-0-9588149-2-8
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6
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Randwick, NSW, Australia
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Australian Association of von Humboldt Fellows (AAvHF), University Melbourne
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Melbourne, VIC, Australia
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