Design of a Multi-Pinhole Collimator in a Dual-Headed, Stationary, Small-Animal SPECT

This work presents the design of a multi-pinhole collimator system for SiliSPECT, a high-resolution dual-headed, stationary SPECT that is being constructed at the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS). SiliSPECT incorporates silicon double-sided strip detectors with an intrinsic resolution of 59 mum. We plan to utilize a large number of tilted micro-pinholes to obtain a good image resolution in a small target region of a mouse while maintaining a practical sensitivity. With this collimator configuration, we are implementing the concept of synthetic collimation to reconstruct tomographic images from an object that is viewed by a limited number of stationary detector heads. The feasibility of the initial collimator design is validated by a Monte Carlo simulation study.