A high resolution Small Field Of View (SFOV) gamma camera: a columnar scintillator coated CCD imager for medical applications

Abstract

We describe a high resolution, small field of view (SFOV), Charge Coupled Device (CCD) based camera for imaging small volumes of radionuclide uptake in tissues. The Mini Gamma Ray Camera (MGRC) is a collimated, scintillator-coated, low cost, high performance imager using low noise CCDs. The prototype MGRC has a 600 μm thick layer of columnar CsI(Tl) and operates in photon counting mode using a thermoelectric cooler to achieve an operating temperature of - 10°C. Collimation was performed using a pin hole collimator. We have measured the spatial resolution, energy resolution and efficiency using a number of radioisotope sources including 140 keV gamma-rays from 99mTc in a specially designed phantom. We also describe our first imaging of a volunteer patient.