Quantitative consideration of collimator parameters in radio-isotope imaging and its application to collimator optimization

A Monte Carlo aided method of calculating the collimator performance parameters is presented and used to quantify the effect of collimator dimensions and photon energy in emission planar and tomographic imaging. The importance of selecting the optimum collimator length and bore diameter is shown and the significance of collimator edge penetration at higher photon energies is demonstrated. Using image quality parameters a practical method of designing a suitable parallel-hole collimator is developed and the trade-offs that must be considered for a successful design are discussed.