Performance characterization of a new CZT-based preclinical SPECT system: a comparative study of different collimators

Abstract

Triumph X-SPECT is a newly released CZT-based preclinical small-animal SPECT system with interchangeable collimators. The purpose of this work was to evaluate and systematically compare the imaging performances of three different collimators in the CZT-based preclinical small-animal system: a single-pinhole collimator (SPH), a multi-pinhole collimator (MPH) and a parallel-hole collimator. We measured the spatial resolutions and sensitivities of the three collimators with 99m Tc sources, considering three distinct energy window widths (5, 10, and 20%), and used the NEMA NU4-2008 Image Quality phantom to test the imaging performance of the three collimators in terms of uniformity and spill-over ratio (SOR) for each energy window. With a 10% energy window width at a radius of rotation (ROR) of 30 mm, the system resolution of the SPH, MPH and parallel-hole collimators was 0.715, 0.855 and 3.270 mm FWHM, respectively. For the same energy window, the sensitivity of the system with SPH, MPH and parallel-hole collimators was 32.860, 152.514 and 49.205 counts/sec/MBq at a 100 mm source-to-detector distance and 6.790, 33.376 and 49.038 counts/sec/MBq at a 130 mm source-to-detector distance, respectively. The image noise and SOR air for the three collimators were 20.137, 12.278 and 11.232 (%STD unif ) and 0.106, 0.140 and 0.161, respectively. Overall, the results show that the SPH had better spatial

Simulation study of the second-generation MR-compatible SPECT system based on the inverted compound-eye gamma camera design

“…As we demonstrated by simulation studies, these improvements enabled the MRC-SPECT-II system to offer a dramatically improved image quality over the MRC-SPECT-I system with a compact detection system that could be inserted in most pre-clinical MR scanners. Also, the performances of MRC-SPECT-II in terms of sensitivity and resolution were significantly better than current generation commercial scanners [39, 40, 41], even though designing an MR-compatible SPECT system that allowed for simultaneous SPECT-MR studies would be subject to many extra constraints than those for designing a regular SPECT system.…”

Design Study of an Ultrahigh Resolution Brain SPECT System Using a Synthetic Compound-Eye Camera Design With Micro-Slit and Micro-Ring Apertures

“…The idea of using semiconductor detectors was previously proposed by Rogulski et al . in [ 20 ], due to the high spatial resolution and improved energy resolution that such detectors can offer in comparison to scintillator-based detectors, and it has been applied in several preclinical [ 21 ]-[ 23 ] and clinical systems [ 24 ]-[ 26 ].…”