HICAM: Development of a high-resolution Anger camera for nuclear medicine

A new Anger camera for nuclear imaging is under development in the framework of the HICAM (HIgh resolution CAMera) project supported by European Community. It is foreseen to be employed in applications where high-position resolution and camera compactness are of primary concern. Thanks to a higher intrinsic resolution (≪1mm), an advanced collimator technology and the camera compactness, it would be possible to achieve an overall improvement of imaging performance of ∼ 2.5 mm (at an imaging distance of 5 cm). The Silicon Drift Detectors (SDDs) used in this camera have recently shown to be a competitive device for the readout of scintillator with respect to conventional photodetectors like photomultiplier tubes, thanks to their high quantum efficiency and low electronics noise. HICAM camera will be composed by 100 SDDs of 1cm² each in a 10 cm × 10 cm format. The modular structure of this camera, as well as the preliminary results of the development of its sub-systems, is presented in this work.