Evaluation of a EMCCD Detector for Emission-Transmission Computed Tomography

A prototype electron multiplying charged coupled device (EMCCD) based gamma camera is evaluated for emission-transmission computed tomography. The detector has an 8.2times8.2 mm2 active sensor area with a 512times512 pixel array, and can be operated with a 3:1 fiber optic taper to expand the effective imaging area to approximately 25times25 mm2 for small animal studies. We demonstrate the possibility of operating the camera in either charge integrating or single photon counting mode for pinhole SPECT with 125I and 99mTc sources. In photon counting mode, we show that energy discrimination can be used to distinguish between these two sources for dual isotope imaging. X-ray CT images of phantoms are taken without a collimator to evaluate the quality of the camera for transmission imaging

[1]  G. Entine,et al.  Structured CsI(Tl) scintillators for X-ray imaging applications , 1997, 1997 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record.

[2]  Colin G. Coates,et al.  Optimizing low-light microscopy with back-illuminated electron multiplying charge-coupled device: enhanced sensitivity, speed, and resolution. , 2004, Journal of biomedical optics.

[3]  F. Beekman,et al.  Photon-counting gamma camera based on an electron-multiplying CCD , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.

[4]  B. Hasegawa,et al.  A CCD-based detector for SPECT , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.

[5]  C. Mackay,et al.  Photon counting strategies with low-light-level CCDs , 2003, astro-ph/0307305.

[6]  Soo Chin Liew,et al.  Description of a prototype emission-transmission computed tomography imaging system. , 1992, Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine.

[7]  I. Shestakova,et al.  Design and performance of an EMCCD based detector for combined SPECT/CT imaging , 2005, IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2005.

[8]  F. Beekman,et al.  Photon-counting versus an integrating CCD-based gamma camera: important consequences for spatial resolution , 2005, Physics in medicine and biology.

[9]  B. Hadwen,et al.  The noise performance of electron multiplying charge-coupled devices , 2003 .