Functional characterization of polymeric organic scintillation material for preclinical imaging applications.

Abstract

This study is aimed at evaluating scintillating plastic blocks with scintillation characteristics matching a highly efficient charge-coupled device (CCD) for preclinical nuclear/radioisotopic imaging. A composite layer formed with an array of plastic blocks is operated as an image collection device. The scintillating layer used four EJ 204 plastic scintillators attached to a 3D-printed supporting piece made from polylactic acid and made up by using an additive manufacturing developing strategy. An image processing algorithm was developed in MATLAB to characterize the response of the scintillation material and to obtain the distribution of radioactive samples in bi-dimensional images. To obtain functional images, a set of correction techniques to reduce scattered radiation was implemented in the collected images. By integrating the radiation detection stage with a robotic rotation system, a three-dimensional reconstruction of a murine model was obtained. The reconstructed preclinical image was overlayed with an X-ray to obtain a functional-anatomical visualization of the radio-pharmaceutical 99mTc-RGD in the studied murine model. The assessed polymeric organic blocks are competitive to professional nuclear/radioisotopic imaging scintillators considering the obtained temporal response and the imaging captured information.