Clinical efficacy of a large-field-of-view scintillation camera.

In evaluating the clinical application of a prototype large-field-of-view scintillation camera, a significant increase in the quality of static and cynamic images was observed. With parallel-hole collimation, imaging time for large areas was reduced by more than 50% and a marked enhancement in resolution and sensitivity of lung images occurred in relation to those obtained with diverging collimation on a conventional camera. Using converging collimation, the prototype camera produced images of brain and other organs with considerably better depth response than comparative studies performed with standard size cameras. These results demonstrate that further clinically relevant improvement in scintillation camera performance is possible.