Development of dynamic three-dimensional multi-pinhole gamma camera

In this paper we propose a dynamic 3-D gamma camera consisting of multi-pinhole collimators and flat panel detectors. Through simulation studies on various pinhole configurations we determined that from a spatial and time resolution consideration, pinhole collimators with a 60 degrees opening angle achieved acceptable dynamic 3-D imaging results. With regard to basic system performance, we estimated that the spatial and time resolution exceeds 3.5 mm and 4 s, respectively, for a small animal injected with Tc-99m with an activity of 37 MBq. In addition, from further experiments we concluded that the proposed system would be acceptable and practical as a dynamic 3-D imager for nuclear medicine applications although position calibration concerns require further study.