CoALA-SPECT: a coded aperture laboratory animal SPECT system for pre clinical imaging

We have previously demonstrated the potential of multi-pinhole coded apertures when used in conjunction with compact pixelated detectors for high resolution, high sensitivity small animal SPECT. We are now constructing a prototype SPECT system with three such detectors mounted on a rotating gantry. Each detector comprises a 12 cm diameter circular array of NaI(Tl) crystals, each 1×1×5 mm³ on a 1.25 mm pitch. Each crystal array is coupled to a Hamamatsu R3292 12.7 cm diameter PS-PMT. Signals from the three detectors are read out by a custom subtractive resistive circuit and multiplexed. Data are acquired by a National Instruments PCI-6110E board running on a Macintosh dual processor G4 computer under Kmax software control. Images are reconstructed using a 3D iterative MAP-EM algorithm based on a multi-pinhole forward and back projector. The trade-off between contrast and variance was studied by simulation for a number of multi-pinhole configurations. We also performed initial planar imaging studies on one of the detectors. Our results indicate that spatial resolution approaching 1 mm full width at half maximum (FWHM) can be achieved with a single pinhole aperture, while improved contrast and variance may result from using optimized multi-pinhole apertures.