The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), as the world's first and only polarized proton collider, offers a unique environment in which to study the spin structure of the proton. In order to study the proton's transverse spin structure, the PHENIX experiment at RHIC took data with transversely polarized beams in 2001-02 and 2005, and it has plans for further running with transverse polarization in 2006 and beyond. Results from early running as well as prospective measurements for the future will be discussed.
We have developed a small scintillation camera dedicated to breast imaging
and have evaluated the performance of the system. In order to increase the
limited field of view (FOV) determined by the size of a position-sensitive
photomultiplier tube (PSPMT), the imaging characteristics of a diverging-hole
collimator (DHC) were also investigated. The small scintillation camera system
consists of an NaI(Tl) crystal (60 mm × 60 mm × 6 mm) coupled to a
Hamamatsu R3941 PSPMT, a resistor chain circuit, preamplifiers, nuclear
instrument modules, an analogue to digital converter and a PC for control and
display. The intrinsic energy resolution of the system was 12.9% FWHM at
140 keV. The spatial resolution was measured using a line-slit mask and
99mTc point sources and was 3.1 mm FWHM. The intrinsic sensitivity
of the system was approximately 162 counts/s kBq-1. The DHC made it
possible to image a larger FOV (75×75 mm2 at the surface of collimator)
than a parallel-hole collimator (60×60 mm2). The system sensitivity
obtained using the DHC gradually decreased with distance (3% at 1 cm, 6% at
2 cm and 9% at 3 cm). The results demonstrate that the system developed in this
study could be utilized clinically to image malignant breast tumours. A DHC can
be employed to expand the FOV of the system confined by the size of PSPMT with
a modest compromise in the performance of the system.
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