Speaker
Mr
Szymon Niedźwiecki
(Jagiellonian University)
Description
Standard Positron Emission Tomography (PET) allows to determine spatial and sometimes also temporal distribution of concentrations of selected substances in the body based on production of 2 gamma quanta from e+e- reaction, with energies of 511 keV.
Positron emitted inside the human body can either annihilate directly with one of the
electrons or it creates the quasi-bound state of electron and positron called positronium atom.
Imaging of the properties of positronium inside the body may deliver new diagnostic
information. J-PET group has developed a way of measuring one of such new parameters [1], but it is necessary to detect positronium decay into 3 photons, which constitutes to about 0.5% of all annihilations.
The energy of photons, due to three body decay, varies from 0 to 511 keV, which implies that J-PET detector needs to sensitive to hard X-ray region.
In the presentation the feasibility of imaging positronium with X-rays will be discussed as well as initial results from measurements performed during this summer.
[1] P. Moskal et al., "Feasibility study of the positronium imaging with the J-PET tomograph", submitted to PMB, HEP: arXiv:https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.11696.pdf
Primary author
Mr
Szymon Niedźwiecki
(Jagiellonian University)
