System, method and/or computer readable medium for mitigation of effects from photon septal penetration in spect imaging

Abstract

A single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging system includes a detector configured to receive photons emitted by a radiopharmaceutical in an examination region and convert the received photons to measured projection data and a collimator with septa spatially arranged with respect to each other and the detector to provide channels to pass photons that traverse the channels and absorb photons that impinge the septa. A first sub-set of the photons emitted by the radiopharmaceutical traverse the channels without impinging the septa and are directly received by the detector. A second sub-set of the photons emitted by the radiopharmaceutical traverse the septa and are received by the detector. The SPECT imaging system further includes a reconstructor configured to discard scatter photons and the second sub-set of photons traversing the septa, and iteratively reconstruct an image based on the first subset of photons that are directly received by the detector.