Evaluation of a clinical scintillation camera with pulse tail extrapolation electronics.

The performance of a new scintillation camera, designed for high event rate capability, was evaluated. The system consisted of a 400 mm field-of-view Nal(T1) camera with 61 photomultiplier tubes and modified General Electric Starport electronics. A significant feature of the system was circuitry for performing pulse tail extrapolation and separation of individual pulses involved in pulse pile-up events. System deadtime, flood field uniformity, energy resolution, linearity, spatial resolution, and bar phantom image quality were evaluated for count rates up to 200 kcps in a 20% photopeak window. Our results indicate that this camera design does not compromise image quality at normal clinical count rates and at higher event rates can provide better image quality and increased sensitivity over many Anger cameras currently employed in nuclear medicine.