An elliptical SPECT system with slit-slat collimation for cardiac imaging.

Cardiac studies are a good candidate for SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) because of the large clinical demand and the need for improved image quality. But SPECT imaging suffers from poor spatial resolution and high statistical noise. A new SPECT system with slit-slat collimation arranged on an elliptical arc for cardiac imaging is proposed in this paper. Simulated emission computed tomography data are generated along an elliptical moving orbit with system configuration parameters. The iterative reconstruction techniques are used to implement the cardiac imaging of the proposed SPECT system. Image reconstruction can be done using the OS-EM algorithm from the data collected. This system is developed to improve the reconstructed image if attenuation correction and depth-dependent correction are included in the reconstruction, and the body contour is used in the reconstruction for severely truncated data. The simulation results show that the present methods can provide significant improvement in the spatial resolution and the image quality of SPECT sets.