Collimator-less SPECT System Design for Dynamic Whole-body Imaging

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel Compton SPECT system designed for whole-body imaging of Actinium-225, offering higher efficiency and resolution for targeted alpha therapy monitoring through Monte Carlo simulation evaluation.

Contribution

The study introduces a collimator-less Compton SPECT system tailored for whole-body imaging of 225Ac, demonstrating its potential for clinical TAT response monitoring.

Findings

Achieves 1.0 cm resolution with a NEMA IQ phantom at 5.7 MBq activity

Sensitivity of 0.5% at 10 cm distance from detector

Resolution varies with activity ratio and background conditions

Abstract

In this study, we introduce a Compton SPECT system for whole-body imaging of Actinium-225 (225Ac), one of the trending radionuclides for targeted alpha therapy (TAT). The Compton SPECT system enables multi-energy gamma photon detection with higher efficiency compared to mechanically collimated SPECT. The system consists of two detectors, providing a field of view (FOV) adequate for whole-body imaging, while achieving high sensitivity and clinically usable imaging resolution within a reasonable scanning time. This work focuses on the system design and evaluation using the Monte Carlo simulation toolkit Gate. The imaging performance is evaluated at two energy peaks (218 keV, 440 keV), representing the major detectable gamma energies generated from 225Ac. We explore the possibility of using the Compton SPECT system for treatment response monitoring in TAT. Results demonstrate an image resolution of 1.0 cm using a NEMA IQ phantom with 5.7 MBq of 225Ac simulated in a cold background. An image resolution of 1.3 cm can be achieved with a hot to background ratio of 30:1, and a resolution of 3.7 cm can be achieved with an activity ratio of 12:1. The best achievable sensitivity at 10 cm distance to the detector is 0.5% with the two energy windows (211-225 keV, 430-450 keV) selected. The proposed system may serve as an alternative imaging tool for TAT scanning in clinical settings.