Effect of axial (2D mode) sampling and resolution on striatal phantom imaging in an ECAT 953B compared to a PETTVI

A series of scans of a glass striatal phantom has been performed to study amount of undersampling in PETTVI and in ECAT 953B tomographs. The ECAT 953B tomographs are shown to present a significant improvement in terms of resolution and axial sampling compared to the PETTVI. The axial sampling of the ECAT 953B is fine enough to allow a consistent recovery of the striatal signal, irrespective of the axial position of the phantom. A single scan is enough to obtain a complete description of the axial activity distribution profile even when imaging substructures of the human striatum. Positioning becomes of lesser consequence, immensely facilitating comparisons of inter-subject scans as well as of repeated scans of the same subject