A high-sensitivity small animal SPECT system

Abstract

Medical imaging using single gamma-ray-emitting radionuclides typically makes use of parallel hole collimators or pinholes in order to achieve good spatial resolution. However, a tradeoff in sensitivity is inherent in the use of a collimator, and modern preclinical single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) systems detect a very small fraction of emitted gamma rays, often less than 0.1%. A system for small animal SPECT imaging which uses no collimators could potentially achieve very high sensitivity—several tens of percent—with reasonably sized detectors. This would allow two significant improvements in preclinical studies: images could be obtained more rapidly, allowing higher throughput for screening applications, or for dynamic processes to be observed with very good time resolution; and images could be obtained with less radioactive tracer, making possible the in vivo imaging of low-capacity receptor systems, aiding research into new tracer compounds, and reducing the cost and easing the regulatory burden of an experiment. Of course, a system with no collimator will not be able to approach the submillimeter spatial resolutions produced by the most advanced pinhole and collimated systems, but a high-sensitivity system with resolution of order 1 cm could nonetheless find significant and new use in the many molecular imaging applications which do not require good spatial resolution—for example, screening applications for drug development or new imaging agents. Rather than as an alternative to high-resolution SPECT systems, the high-sensitivity system is proposed as a radiotracer alternative to optical imaging for small animals. We have developed a prototype system for mouse imaging applications. The scanner consists of two large, thin, closely spaced scintillation detectors. Simulation studies indicate that a FWHM spatial resolution of 7 mm is possible. In an in vivo mouse imaging study using the 99mTc labeled tracer MAG-3, the sensitivity of the system is measured to be 40%. Simple projection images created by analytically combining the two detectors' data show sufficient resolution to observe the dynamic distribution of the radiotracer in the mouse.