Design and Development of a Dedicated Portable Gamma Camera System for Intra-Operative Imaging Publisher Pubmed



Kaviani S¹ ; Zeraatkar N¹ ; Sajedi S¹ ; Akbarzadeh A¹ ; Gorjizadeh N^{1, 2} ; Farahani MH¹ ; Teimourian B¹ ; Ghafarian P^{3, 4} ; Sabet H⁵ ; Ay MR^{1, 2}
Source: Physica Medica Published:2016

Abstract

Purpose We developed a high performance portable gamma camera platform dedicated to identification of sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) and radio-guided surgery for cancer patients. In this work, we present the performance characteristics of SURGEOSIGHT-I, the first version of this platform that can intra-operatively provide high-resolution images of the surveyed areas. Methods At the heart of this camera, there is a 43 × 43 array of pixelated sodium-activated cesium iodide (CsI(Na)) scintillation crystal with 1 × 1 mm2 pixel size and 5 mm thickness coupled to a Hamamatsu H8500 flat-panel multi-anode (64 channels) photomultiplier tube. The probe is equipped with a hexagonal parallel-hole lead collimator with 1.2 mm holes. The detector, collimator, and the associated front-end electronics are encapsulated in a common housing referred to as head. Results Our results show a count rate of ∼41 kcps for 20% count loss. The extrinsic energy resolution was measured as 20.6% at 140 keV. The spatial resolution and the sensitivity of the system on the collimator surface was measured as 2.2 mm and 142 cps/MBq, respectively. In addition, the integral and differential uniformity, after uniformity correction, in useful field-of-view (UFOV) were measured 4.5% and 4.6%, respectively. Conclusions This system can be used for a number of clinical applications including SLN biopsy and radiopharmaceutical-guided surgery. © 2016 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica