Elsevier

Cardiology Clinics

Volume 27, Issue 2, May 2009, Pages 227-236
Cardiology Clinics

New Trends in Camera and Software Technology in Nuclear Cardiology

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccl.2008.12.002Get rights and content

This article describes advancements in hardware and software for myocardial perfusion imaging that are becoming commercialized today and their implication in clinical practice.

Section snippets

New ultrafast cameras

Several manufacturers have begun to break away from the conventional SPECT imaging approach to create innovative designs of dedicated cardiac scanners. In all of these designs, all available detectors are constrained to imaging just the cardiac field of view. Fig. 2 shows how eight detectors surrounding the patient are all simultaneously imaging the heart. These new designs vary in the number and type of scanning or stationary detectors and in whether NaI or cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) solid

Rotating camera developments

In addition to the radically new camera designs described previously, other manufacturers and investigators have modified the electronics, system geometry, or collimation to significantly improve the imaging performance of rotating SPECT cameras.

Faster acquisition via image reconstruction advancements

The time of acquisition of an MPI study depends on the resolution required to resolve perfusion defects in the myocardium above the inherent noise due to limited count sensitivity. The resolution and sensitivity of parallel-hole collimators depends on the shape, length, and size of the holes. Each hole in the collimator restricts the photons that may strike the crystal to those that originate within the arc φ. Lengthening the holes of the collimator reduces φ and the area exposed through each

Fast-speed myocardial perfusion imaging: clinical implications

The camera design and software improvements reviewed in this article result in a reduction of acquisition time for MPI ranging from half of the conventional acquisition time to a minimum 2-minute acquisition. Clinically, these fast acquisitions would allow flexibility of acquisition protocols, reducing camera and patient total time and cost and increasing patient comfort.28 Reduced acquisition times would also lead to decreased patient motion which results from translation, smearing, and

Summary

Dedicated cardiac SPECT imagers are undergoing a profound change in design for the first time in 50 years. The Anger camera general purpose design is being replaced with systems with multiple detectors focused on the heart, yielding five to ten times the sensitivity of conventional SPECT. Some of the designs also replace the NaI(Tl) crystal with solid state CZT electronic detectors with superior energy resolution. There are also significant innovations in reconstruction software incorporated

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