Development and performance evaluation of a gamma camera for intraoperative navigation application

Abstract

To fulfill the requirements of intraoperative sentinel lymph node (SLN) imaging applications in terms of high resolution, fast temporal response, low cost, and compact structure, a small gamma camera with high detection performance, A compact high-resolution pixelated detector is designed on the basis of scintillation crystal and silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) arrays. The gamma detector comprises two units, and each unit is composed of a pixelated array of 50×50 YSO scintillation crystals with a crystal geometry of 0.8 mm×0.8 mm×6.0 mm. The scintillation crystal array is then coupled to an 8×8 SiPM array with 4 mm thick light guide. A parallel-hole collimator matched to the pixelated detector is mounted at the entrance of the camera for good sensitivity performance. The flood histogram reveals that most of the 0.8 mm×0.8 mm YSO pixels can be resolved by the detector. The spatial resolution and sensitivity of the system are evaluated by imaging experiments. Results confirm that the system is promising for intraoperative navigation of SLN biopsy.