High-performance SPECT for dynamic brain imaging

项目总结/摘要： 脑单光子发射计算机断层扫描（SPECT）成像对于以下方面具有重要意义： 许多临床应用如癫痫、痴呆、创伤后应激障碍、阿尔茨海默病， 帕金森氏症和肿瘤成像。传统的双头伽马相机（DHGC）， 在核成像（特别是心脏筛查）中一直是主流的放射性核素并不适用于脑成像 其中需要同时实现高分辨率和高灵敏度。取决于准直器 选择DHGC分辨率为7 - 15 mm FWHM，这对于可视化人体的精细结构不是很有用 个脑袋有几个正在进行的项目，其前提是与 然而，DHGC系统要么专注于使用旧的检测器技术， 准直器几何形状或聚焦非常昂贵（与当前设计相比的数量级） 半导体技术，这也导致了一个复杂的系统。 通过该应用，我们寻求开发一种便携式SPECT扫描仪，用于~4 mm的动态脑部成像 FWHM分辨率与DHGC的灵敏度相同，或在7 mm分辨率下灵敏度提高8倍。骨干 设计的关键是我们的技术，以实际成本制造高分辨率探测器。拟议 该项目将为低剂量脑SPECT成像应用开辟新的途径，并使纵向研究成为可能。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: Brain Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) imaging has been of great importance for many clinical applications such as epilepsy, dementia, posttraumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and tumor imaging. The conventional dual-head gamma cameras (DHGCs) which have been the mainstay in nuclear imaging (specifically for cardiac screening) are not optimized for brain imaging where achieving simultaneously high resolution and high sensitivity is necessary. Depending on the collimator choice, DHGC resolution is 7-15 mm FWHM, which is not very useful to visualize fine structures of the human brain. There are several ongoing projects with the premise of improved scanner performance compared to the DHGC systems, however they are either focusing on using old detector technology and mainly improving the collimator geometry or focusing on very expensive (order of magnitude compared with the current designs) semiconductor technology which also leads to a complex system. With this application we seek to develop a portable SPECT scanner for dynamic brain imaging with ~4 mm FWHM resolution at the same sensitivity of the DHGC or 8x more sensitivity at 7 mm resolution. The backbone of the design is our enabling technology to fabricate high resolution detectors at practical cost. The proposed project will open new avenues for low dose brain SPECT imaging applications and enable longitudinal studies.