Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.

Trudy Dayle Rempel

James Frank Caruba

A Hans Vija

Ronald E Malmin

Eric Grant Hawman

Sharon Xiaorong Wang

James T Chapman

Fred E Macciocchi

System includes a signal processing system to receive a digital signal associated with first scintillation events and to determine a value associated with each of the events, a backend processing system to receive the values, determine an event rate based on the received values, determine whether the event rate is greater than a first threshold, and, if the event rate is greater, transmit a first instruction to increase a consecutive event dump level, and an event management control to receive the first instruction to increase the consecutive event dump level, increase the consecutive event dump level in response to the received instruction, determine a number of consecutive scintillation events of detected second scintillation events, determine to dump the consecutive scintillation events based on a comparison between the number of consecutive scintillation events and the consecutive event dump level, and transmit a second instruction to dump the consecutive scintillation events.

Dynamic control of event dumping

Systems and methods are described for co-registering, displaying and quantifying images from numerous different medical modalities, such as CT, MRI and SPECT. In this novel approach co-registration and image fusion is based on multiple user-defined Regions-of-Interest (ROI), which may be subsets of entire image volumes, from multiple modalities, where the each ROI may depict data from different image modalities. The user-selected ROI of a first image modality may be superposed over or blended with the corresponding ROI of a second image modality, and the entire second image may be displayed with either the superposed or blended ROI.

Systems and methods for localized image registration and fusion

A process for obtaining an attenuation map from a truncated transmission scan of an imaged object, by compensating for missing emission data as a result of truncation by using non-truncated emission data of the imaged object to derive 'fill-in' emission data. The truncation-compensated emission data then is used to generate an attenuation map for correcting a reconstructed emission image for effects of attenuation.

Compensating for truncated CT images for use as attenuation maps in emission tomography

According to the present invention, an improved source collimator for use in nuclear medicine imaging is provided. The improved source collimator utilizes a larger collimation angle than has previously been used in the art. The use of the larger collimation angle for the source collimator reduces the sensitivity of the nuclear medical imaging systems to misalignment between the detector and the source collimators.

Collimators for an array of radioactive lines for use on a spect system for non-uniform attenuation correction measurements

In some preferred embodiments, an apparatus is provided that facilitates correction, such as, e.g., linearity correction, in imaging devices, such as, e.g., scintillation cameras. In preferred embodiments, a mask is implemented that can produce images for locating the actual position of a nuclear event based on its apparent position with high accuracy and reliability. In the preferred embodiments, the mask includes a non-uniform array of apertures that can achieve this goal.

Imaging devices and methods employing masks with a non-uniform grid of pinhole apertures

Spacing of septa (septa pitch)used in coincidence imaging is varied to maximize imaging count rate in coincidence imaging by PET or Hybrid PET. This is accomplished through use of detector performance indicators, which are used in connection with a processor to determine the point of peak performance. These detector performance indicators can be, but are not limited to single photon count rate, detector dead time or detector busy time.

Growing community of inventors

Glen Ellyn, IL, United States of America

Trudy Dayle Rempel