We describe a high resolution, small field of view (SFOV), Charge Coupled Device (CCD) based camera for imaging small volumes of radionuclide uptake in tissues. The Mini Gamma Ray Camera (MGRC) is a collimated, scintillator-coated, low cost, high performance imager using low noise CCDs. The prototype MGRC has a 600 µm thick layer of columnar CsI(Tl) and operates in photon counting mode using a thermoelectric cooler to achieve an operating temperature of -10 ˚C. Collimation was performed using a pin hole collimator. We have measured the spatial resolution, energy resolution and efficiency using a number of radioisotope sources including 140 keV gamma-rays from 99m Tc in a specially designed phantom. We also describe our first imaging of a volunteer patient.
We present a new concept for a medical imaging system, the Hybrid Mini Gamma Camera (HMGC). This combines an optical and a gamma-ray camera in a co-aligned configuration that offers high spatial resolution multi-modality imaging for superimposition of a scintigraphic image on an optical image. This configuration provides visual identification of the sites of localisation of radioactivity that would be especially suited to medical imaging. An extension of the new concept using two hybrid cameras (The StereoScope) offers the potential for stereoscopic imaging with depth estimation for a gamma emitting source.
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