Theoretical analysis of full-ring multi-pinhole brain SPECT.

Presently used clinical brain SPECT suffers from limited spatio-temporal resolution. Here we investigate the feasibility of high-resolution and high-sensitivity full-ring multi-pinhole brain SPECT (MP-SPECT). Using an analytical model we optimized pinhole-detector geometries of MP-SPECT for different detector intrinsic resolutions R(i).

Optimizing multi-pinhole SPECT geometries using an analytical model.

State-of-the-art multi-pinhole SPECT devices allow for sub-mm resolution imaging of radio-molecule distributions in small laboratory animals. The optimization of multi-pinhole and detector geometries using simulations based on ray-tracing or Monte Carlo algorithms is time-consuming, particularly because many system parameters need to be varied. As an efficient alternative we develop a continuous analytical model of a pinhole SPECT system with a stationary detector set-up, which we apply to focused imaging of a mouse.