Image acquisition and reconstruction in multi-pinhole emission tomography

Nowadays, tomographic imaging techniques are inseparable from modern medical practice as they allow non-invasive 3-dimensional visualization of the interior of a patient in order to e.g. establish a medical diagnosis, or to monitor disease progression and the effects of disease treatment. Next to clinical use, tomographic imaging techniques are also applied in research with small animals -like mice and rats- in studies of disease or in the development of pharmaceuticals. SPECT and PET are functional imaging modalities that enable visualization of the distribution of radioactive tracer molecules (‘tracers’). The type of tracer molecule that is injected determines the physiological processes or biochemical pathways that are visualized. The radiation emitted by the tracer molecules can be detected and a 3-dimensional image of the tracer distribution can be reconstructed. The research that was performed for this thesis mainly focuses on new image acquisition techniques and image reconstruction techniques for high-resolution small-animal imaging of SPECT and PET tracers.Radiation Science & TechnologyApplied Science