Potential for radioscintography with polycapillary optics

摘要

The potential use of polycapillary optics could provide extraordinarily high spatial resolution imaging of radioactive sources for a new generation of gamma cameras is being investigated. A series of images from ~(125)I brachytherapy seeds in Lucite phantoms display resolution better than 0.1 mm and signal to noise ratios in excess of a factor of 10. Such "cellular" level resolution might allow early stage location of prostate tumors, and be used to study their size, shape, and rate of growth. Even before being developed into the compact size needed for transrectal investigation of prostate cancer, imaging detectors using such high spatial resolution polycapillary angular filters may be valuable for small animal model studies and other research.