Photon quantum entanglement in the MeV regime and its application in PET imaging

Nat Commun. 2021 May 11;12(1):2646. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-22907-5.

Abstract

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a widely-used imaging modality for medical research and clinical diagnosis. Imaging of the radiotracer is obtained from the detected hit positions of the two positron annihilation photons in a detector array. The image is degraded by backgrounds from random coincidences and in-patient scatter events which require correction. In addition to the geometric information, the two annihilation photons are predicted to be produced in a quantum-entangled state, resulting in enhanced correlations between their subsequent interaction processes. To explore this, the predicted entanglement in linear polarisation for the two photons was incorporated into a simulation and tested by comparison with experimental data from a cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) PET demonstrator apparatus. Adapted apparati also enabled correlation measurements where one of the photons had undergone a prior scatter process. We show that the entangled simulation describes the measured correlations and, through simulation of a larger preclinical PET scanner, illustrate a simple method to quantify and remove the unwanted backgrounds in PET using the quantum entanglement information alone.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Cadmium / chemistry*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Photons*
  • Positron-Emission Tomography / instrumentation
  • Positron-Emission Tomography / methods*
  • Tellurium / chemistry*
  • Zinc / chemistry*

Substances

  • CdZnTe
  • Cadmium
  • Zinc
  • Tellurium