Research and Development of an Adaptive Helical Micro-Spect System

A micro-SPECT system for small-animal imaging with adjustable magnifications and scanning modesis proposed. Since small-animal SPECT systems typically possess simple configurations and relativelylower cost, small-animal SPECT is suitable for preclinical research. Micro-SPECT along with smallanimalmodels of human diseases is widely used to study disease mechanisms and investigate potentialtherapies. To increase the detection area and provide the listmode data, a tiled gamma camera will beconstructed. A multi-pinhole aperture will be specifically designed to optimize the system sensitivity andresolution. In addition, the magnification modulation and scanning mode switch will be achieved with themotorized stages.The system matrices of the adaptive micro-SPECT can be rapidly obtained by the interpolation methodpreviously developed in our group. Subsequently, the system configurations for different detectionrequirements can be optimized with the evaluations of classification tasks and sampling completeness. Inaddition, the FPGA module is applied to the readout electronics of the tiled gamma camera for enabling theevent-trigger mode, so the storage memory and the detector deadtime can be minimized. Finally, theperformance of the proposed adaptive micro-SPECT will be verified with the specific phantoms andsmall-animal imaging experiments.