Lecture: “Nuclear Medicine Instrumentation: SPECT and PET technologies”

Nuclear Medicine Instrumentation: SPECT and PET technologies
Stratos David
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of West Attica, Athens, Greece

Molecular imaging using high-resolution single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) scanners has advanced elegantly and has steadily gained importance in the clinical and research arenas. This lecture will briefly summarize the state-of-the-art developments in Nuclear Medicine instrumentation regarding the design of different geometries and various detector technologies of SPECT and PET scanners. Preclinical “low cost” imaging systems, very high-resolution research applications (including small-animal imaging), and combined systems such as SPECT/MR and whole-body PET/MR scanners will also be discussed. Combining PET or SPECT with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology is scientifically more challenging owing to the strong magnetic fields. Options of new bright scintillators and photodetectors are discussed, including co-doped and mixed scintillators as well as discrete silicon photomultiplier arrays (SiPMs). Finally, it will be discussed how the crucial parameters (energy, spatial and timing resolution, sensitivity and injection dose) improved with whole body geometry, time of flight (ToF) and depth of interactions (DoI) techniques. Future prospects will also be discussed.

Additional Details

Organizer:
Prof. Lorenzo Scalise, Measurement Group, DIISM
Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, ITALY
in collaboration with Italy Chapter of the IEEE Sensors Council
For information please contact: l.scalise@univpm.it