Douglas Jay Wagenaar1, Dirk Meier1, Orhan Nalciolgu2, L. Tugan Muftuler2, Yuchuan Wang3, Benjamin Ming-Wa Tsui3, Bradley Earl Patt1
1Research, Gamma Medica-Ideas, Inc., Northridge, CA, USA; 2Tu & Yuen Center for Functional Onco-Imaging, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA; 3Radiology, Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Baltimore, MD, USA
A portable and stationary SPECT system has been engineered to operate simultaneously within the 12.0 cm diameter bore of high-field, pre-clinical MRI imaging systems. For decades the photomultiplier tubes used in nuclear medicine precluded such a system. The use of pixellated semiconductor CZT as the detection material allows gamma-ray imaging in the high-field setting. This mouse-only apparatus is capable of producing dynamic SPECT with 1.5 mm FWHM spatial resolution and high sensitivity. Multimodality imaging is established in pre-clinical research and we present first images of phan-toms and laboratory animals of this SPECT/MRI instrument.
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