Final design of the C-SPECT-I lab-prototype

Improving system sensitivity without sacrificing imaging resolution is the key to improving the performance of cardiac SPECT imaging. This sensitivity increase is needed for reducing imaging time, or radiation dose, and/or motion artifacts for clinical imaging studies, as well as for exploration of new clinical applications. In addition, attenuation correction is necessary to yield quantitative information - the long-standing goal of SPECT imaging. These goals can be met by C-SPECT - our proposed dedicated cardiac platform for SPECT imaging. High sensitivity is accomplished by C-SPECT's optimized detection and system geometry, which wraps around patients' left-front thorax and provides the highest practical geometric efficiency for any spatial resolution of collimation. The first generation of C-SPECT platform - C-SPECT-I - is the simplified version that uses parallel axial collimation instead of the ultimate 3D converging collimation. In the presented final design, C-SPECT-I's variable collimation system provides 5 slit-arcs, for transaxial collimation to match with 2 slat-stacks, for axial collimation, to provide high system sensitivity and a large number of simultaneous projections. This lab-prototype will provide a system sensitivity that is 2.5 times that of a dual-head SPECT system for heart imaging with the same hardware resolution at the center of the imaging volume as well as unprecedented functionality and operational versatility.