Advanced Collimators for Nuclear Medicine

描述(由申请人提供)： 长期目标是提高医学成像质量，从而改善对一些人类健康疾病的检测、诊断和治疗。这项研究的具体目的是制造用于核医学成像的先进的高分辨率准直器。 一种创新的制造技术将被用于生产由改进材料制成的先进的高分辨率准直器。新的制造方法和新的准直器材料的结合在设计灵活性和性能方面比现有的准直器制造技术提供了重要的优势。这是一项令人信服的技术。最重要的是，它有可能以相对较低的成本生产非常高质量的准直器。 第一阶段将通过制造采用致密(-11g/cc)复合材料的低能高分辨率(Lehr)准直器原型来证明技术可行性，并将其尺寸精度和成像性能与商业上最先进的Lehr准直器进行比较。第二阶段将改进技术途径，并将技术扩展到“对准”探测器系统中的其他元件，包括准直器、闪烁体探测器阵列和光学接口元件。 潜在的商业应用包括核医学(小型和大型相机)、计算机断层扫描、乳房X光照相，以及非医疗应用，如天体物理学、无损检测和安全扫描仪。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term objective is to improve medical imaging quality, thereby improving detection, diagnosis, and therapy for a number of human health diseases. The specific aim of this research is to fabricate advanced high-resolution collimators for nuclear medicine imaging. An innovative fabrication technology will be used to produce advanced high-resolution collimators made from improved materials. The combination of a new fabrication method and new collimator materials offer important advantages in terms of design flexibility and performance over current collimator fabrication techniques. This is an enabling technology. Most importantly, it has the potential to allow very high-quality collimators to be produced at a relatively low cost. Phase I will demonstrate technical feasibility by fabricating prototype low energy high-resolution (LEHR) collimators employing a dense (-11 g/cc) composite material, and comparing their dimensional accuracy and imaging performance against state-of-the-art LEHR collimators commercially available. Phase II will refine the technological approach and extend the technology to other elements in an 'aligned' detector system including collimator, scintillator detector array, and optical interface elements. Potential commercial applications include nuclear medicine (small and large format cameras), computed tomography, mammography, as well as non-medical applications such as astrophysics, non-destructive testing, and security scanners.