TABLE OF CONTENTS Nuclear medicine cameras used for single photon emitters follow a design developed by Anger [1] about four decades ago.
Overall ability to perform accurate data acquisition and reconstruction in single photon imaging tasks depends on a number of clinical and physical factors. The development potential of nuclear medicine techniques relies mainly on the thorough analysis of such factors and, whenever useful, on the possibility of transferring this knowledge into the mathematical algorithms devoted to highlight information contained in the "raw" data set.
The quantity of ?-rays usefully detected depends on i) factors related to the morphology of the object (patient or phantom) under investigation, ii) procedural factors dealing with the specific acquisition performed, iii) technical factors related to the instrumentation involved and iv) factors related to physical effects like Compton diffusion and attenuation of the electromagnetic radiation. Once the raw data have been obtained, either in a planar or in a tomographic acquisition, the final image depends on the reconstruction or post processing methods employed.
It is worthwhile noting that imaging hardware limits the information available for any given imaging procedure. For instance, projection data acquired with an inappropriate collimation system may lead to a degraded image whose original characteristics, despite post processing recovery efforts, can never be restored. It is known that the collimator choice determines the trade-off between image spatial resolution and detection...
