Investigation of the Intrinsic Spatial Resolution of an Intensified EMCCD Scintillation Camera

In this paper, we present an experimental and Monte Carlo investigation of the intrinsic spatial resolution that can be achieved with the intensified electron-multiplying charge-coupled device (I-EMCCD) gamma camera . This detector has a very low readout noise, an ultra-high spatial resolution and a large active area of ~ 80 mm diameter, which is well-suited for small animal imaging applications. The intrinsic detector resolutions achieved with different scintillators and under different experimental conditions were compared. In this study, the simple centroiding method was compared with two model-fitting approaches for finding the locations of gamma ray interactions. The results from Monte Carlo simulation have demonstrated that with an appropriate detector configuration, it is possible to achieve an intrinsic resolution of ~ 30 mum FWHM for detecting 27-35 keV gamma rays. The I-EMCCD scintillation camera offers a promising candidate for future ultra-high resolution SPECT imaging applications.