Elscint Ltd.

Elgems Ltd.

Yigal Shrem

Gideon Berlad

Yaron Hefetz

Naor Wainer

Leonid Yakubovsky

Albert Henry Lonn

Adi Balan

Benny Hajaj

Dov Maor

Adrian Soil

Alex Natanzon

Alex Matanzon

Dov Maop

Adrian Sott

A method of mounting a CT imager on a gantry: determining a center of rotation of a rotor of the gantry; siting a plurality of mounting elements at predetermined positions with respect to the center of rotation; and attaching the mounting elements to the rotor while keeping the mounting elements at the predetermined positions.

Gamma camera and CT system

A nuclear medicine camera having an X-ray imaging capability, comprising:

Apparatus for producing attenuation corrected nuclear medicine images of patients, comprising:

A method of producing a nuclear medicine image of a subject comprising the steps of acquiring nuclear image data suitable to produce a nuclear tomographic image, the data being acquired by at least one gamma camera head () rotating about the subject at an average first rate, acquiring x-ray imaging data suitable to produce an x-ray tomographic image for attenuation correction of the gamma camera image, the data being acquired by an array of detectors () irradiated by an x-ray source () rotating around the subject at an average second rate which is within a factor of 10 of the first rate, and reconstructing an attenuation corrected nuclear medicine image utilizing the nuclear imaging data and x-ray imaging data.

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

Stabilized scatter free gamma camera images

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.

Growing community of inventors

Haifa, Israel

Yigal Shrem