A New High Performance Detector for Small Animal SPECT

描述（由申请人提供）：核医学技术，如SPECT，有潜力成为在细胞或分子水平上成像生物过程的强大新工具。随着人类疾病模型的数量不断增加，特别是在小鼠和大鼠等较小的动物中，高分辨率核成像技术在如此精细的水平上提供独特信息的潜力正变得越来越明显。最近，对小动物SPECT的需求也受到制药行业的推动，制药行业需要对生物过程进行体内量化，以测量药物的作用机制及其在作用部位的浓度。传统上，在实验动物研究中使用SPECT的主要障碍是空间分辨率差、灵敏度低和成本高。为了解决这些不足，我们提出了一种基于闪烁体耦合位置敏感探测器的独特设计的新型探测器。具体来说，我们建议开发一种SPECT检测器，可以在经济有效的方式下实现极好的空间分辨率和高灵敏度。这项工作将集中于开发一个完整的小动物SPECT系统作为原型产品。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Nuclear medicine techniques, such as SPECT, have a potential to become powerful new tools for imaging biological processes on a cellular or molecular level. With ever increasing number of human disease models, particularly in smaller animals such as mice and rats, the potential for high-resolution nuclear imaging technologies to contribute unique information on such a fine level is becoming apparent. Recently, the demand for small animal SPECT has also been driven by the pharmaceutical industry where in vivo quantification of biological processes to measure an agent's mechanism of action and its concentration at the site of action is necessary.The main barriers to using SPECT in studies of laboratory animals have traditionally been poor spatial resolution, low sensitivity, and high cost. To address these deficiencies, it is proposed to develop a novel detector, based on a unique design of a scintillator coupled to a position sensitive detector. Specifically, we propose to develop a SPECT detector that can achieve extremely fine spatial resolution and high sensitivity in a cost-effective manner. The effort will focus on the development of a complete small-animal SPECT system as a prototype product.