Elscint Ltd.

Adrian Soil

Gideon Berlad

Dov Maor

Yigal Shrem

Alex Natanzon

A system for recording fewer of the events that are caused by unwanted photons with greater stability. The system locally determines the energy spectrum and fits for each pixel of the image the determined energy spectrum with a modified trial function composed of: a photopeak component of known energy shape, Compton scatter components having theoretically derived energy shapes and, when applicable, also measured or calculated energy spectra of other unwanted photons. The modified trial function also takes into consideration unknown local deviations in the outputs of electronic components. The amplitude of the photopeak distribution resulting from the fit is used to obtain the local content of wanted interactions in the image. This enables removal of Compton contamination and also the contamination caused by interaction of the gamma photons with lead components.

Method of and apparatus for improving gamma camera image

A system for recording fewer of the events that are caused either by Compton scatter photons or by gamma radiation interacting with lead. The system locally determines the energy spectrum and fits the determined energy spectrum with a trial function composed of a photopeak component of known energy shape, but unknown magnitude and a Compton scatter component having a theoretically derived energy shape and an unknown magnitude for each pixel of the image. The trial function is locally fitted to the measured energy spectrum to obtain the values of both the Compton Coefficient and the gamma radiation interacting with lead. This enables removal of Compton contamination and also the contamination caused by interaction of the gamma photons with lead components.

Reduction of image artifacts caused by unwanted photons

Correction for Compton scattering is effected by analysis of the energy spectra. More particularly, a measured energy spectrum is constructed per location from detected counts that are stored according to their measured energy as well as according to the location of gamma ray infingement on a scintillating detector. The measured spectrum comprises scattered and unscattered photons. A physically correct trial function enables the separation of overlapping contributions of scattered and unscattered photons. The trial function includes multiple collision terms that are preferably constructed using the Nishina-Klein equations describing photon Compton scatter probability distributions. The count of unscattered photons per location is derived from the measured spectrum by locally fitting to the trial function. The count of the unscattered photons per location is used to produce the improved images with reduced artifacts caused by Compton scatter.

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Haifa, Israel

Adrian Soil