Sopha Medical

Commissariat a L'energie Atomique

Michel Bourguignon

Christian Pare

Francois De La Barre

Christoph Thol

Hafida Berrah

Marie-Michele Vassiliou

To acquire both a scatter image and an emission image in nuclear medicine, it is chosen to detect the emission image by validating the radioactive events that occur in the nominal range of the radioactive marker chosen. For the scatter image, lower energy ranges are chosen, these ranges corresponding to the production of at least secondary or tertiary Compton photons. It is shown that it is possible, in this way, to reconstruct an artifact-free transmission image. This scatter image is used to correct the initially acquired emission image. It is shown that it is possible to acquire both images at the same time.

Method for the acquisition, in nuclear medicine, of a scatter image

The noise is eliminated from the images by carrying out a first Fourier transform of the images of an original batch of images. Each of these transformed images is then broken down into Fourier series to reveal the main harmonics of a periodic evolution of the original images and of the transformed images. This harmonic breakdown is used to recompose transformed images that are thus filtered by the abandoning of the non-useful harmonics. The filtered transformed images are used to carry out a reverse Fourier transform to obtain, ultimately, filtered original images. It is shown that the filtering in this case removes the noise without lowering the quality of the structures of the image, without distributing the noise among all these structures.

Method for the processing of the images of a batch of images

A gamma camera is provide, that can be used to measure the coefficient of attenuation of the gamma radiation in a body studied by means of a gamma camera normally made to study the effects of gamma radiation emitted by markers injected into the body. To this end, the collimator is removed from this gamma camera, and it is replaced by a ring and by an arm to which there is fixed a chamber designed to contain a radioactive point source external to the body. It is shown that it is thus possible to obtain images in transmission very swiftly. These images are useful for the correction of normal emission images.

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Sceaux, France

Michel Bourguignon