GreenSSPA · Implementation of Best Practice of Design Solid-State Power Amplifier for Developing New Generation PET Accelerators

Implementation of Best Practice of Design Solid-State Power Amplifier for Developing New Generation PET Accelerators

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is one of the most reliable clinical diagnostic methods used to detect neurodegenerative disorders (e.g., Dementia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's disease) and cancer. The early diagnosis of these diseases, which would be for example before a tumor grows too large or spreads dramatically, enhances the effectiveness of the possibility for treatment. PET technology is used to make an accurate and timely diagnosis/prognosis. It is however essential to speed up the diagnostic process, PET centers are usually limited to handle all of the demands on time in densely populate regions. A cyclotron is the most complicated and sophisticated part of a PET installation. It makes a strong electric field to accelerate particles, resulting in the production of radioisotopes. Hence, in hospital without a cyclotron and remote areas, it is a problem to deliver the radioactive material, as it has a short lifetime, half an hour to few hours and it costs quite a lot to ship the radioactive material by helicopter. One reasons for the project is to spread the availability of PET technology and so to meet scientific and societal needs. For economical or technical reasons PET scanners are not always available where they would be needed. Another reason for the development of new PET technologies is the emergence of new diagnostics based on short-lived PET radionuclides. These could be produced using relatively low energy particle accelerators, more easily deployed. Such radionuclides would decay in several minutes and therefore their production on site at hospitals is mandatory. Therefore the need for new PET technology that would allow on-site generation of short-lived radionuclides. The strong electric field is presently produced by a tetrode vacuum tube which is an outdated technology and is more and more expensive to use and maintain. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions program, the GreenSSPA project aims to develop solid-state transistor-based technology to replace the vacuum tube in the new generation of more compact cyclotron installations, making those more reliable, affordable and accessible to the largest public. In this project, we proposed to design and implement different SSPAs including a high efficiency 1-kW SSPA at 750 MHz as to investigate the possibility of implementing SSPAs with high output power levels and high efficiency.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union