Imaging the attenuation coefficients of magnetically constrained positron beams in matter

This paper describes a method for tomographically imaging the linear attenuation coefficients (LACs) of positron beams in heterogeneous materials. A β+ ray emitter such as 68Ga, placed in a uniform 3T static magnetic field, generates a well-defined positron beam that maintains its spatial coherence over an attenuation of more than 10-3 while signaling its intensity via the annihilation radiation it generates. A positron emission tomography (PET) system embedded in the magnetic field measures the positron-electron annihilation distribution within objects illuminated by the beam. It's shown that this image can be decomposed into maps of the positron beam's flux and its material-dependent LACs without need for auxiliary measurements or transmission of the beam completely through the object. The initial implementation employs a hybrid PET/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner developed for medical applications. Mass thicknesses up to 0.55 g/cm2 at a spatial resolution of a few millimeters have been imaged.