SU-C-9A-07: Fabrication and Calibration of a Novel High-Sensitivity Collimator for Brain SPECT Imaging

Abstract

Purpose: We have designed a novel collimator for brain SPECT imaging that yields greatly increased sensitivity near the center of the brain without loss of resolution. The collimator was manufactured and initial evaluation has been completed. Methods: The collimator was time-consuming and challenging to build. Because our desired hole pattern required substantial variations in hole angle, we designed two supporting plates to securely position about 34,000 hexagonal, slightly tapered, 75-mm long steel pins. The holes in the plates were modeled to yield the desired focal length, hole length and septal thickness. Molten lead was poured in between the plates, and all pins were removed after cooling. The sensitivity gain compared to a fan-beam collimator was measured using a point source placed along the central ray at several distances from the collimator face. Visual inspection of the holes was not possible as the collimator was sealed so it could be safely mounted on a SPECT system. Therefore, we prepared a 2D array of 768, ∼48μCi Tc-99m point sources, separated by 1.6 cm. The array was imaged for 10 minutes at 4 shifted locations to reduce sampling distance to 8 mm. Results: The sensitivity of the novel cone-beam collimator varied with distancemore » from the detector face; it was higher than that of the fan-beam collimator by factors ranging from 3 to 176. Examination of the projections of the 4×768 point sources revealed that fewer than 2% of the holes were fully or partially blocked, which indicates that the intensive manual fabrication process was very successful. Conclusion: We have designed and manufactured a novel collimator for brain SPECT imaging. As expected, the sensitivity is much higher than that of a fan-beam collimator. Because of differences between the manufactured collimator and its design, reconstruction of the data will require a measured system function.« less