Performance measurements of parallel hole collimators of a Philips

Brightview gamma camera

- Mauro Sousa (BSc), Insttuto de Biofsica e Engenharia Biomdica (IBEB), Faculty of Sciences University of Lisbon;
Bruno Martns (MSc), Collaborator at Nuclear Medicine-Radiopharmacoly, Champalimaud Clinical Centre, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Champalimaud Foundaton; and
collaborator at Mercurius Health, SA;
- Durval Costa (MD, MSc, PhD), Director of Nuclear Medicine-Radiopharmacology, Champalimaud Clinical Centre, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Champalimaud Foundaton.
It is observable that both the LEHR collimators
show the presence of streaks, which indicate slight
misalignements in the images vertcal directon.
Further analysis shows evidence that these line ar-
tefacts are lower on actvity (not shown), which
shows that some septa are not perpendicular to
the detector.
Seeing that septal misalignements are only pre-
sent in the LEHR collimators, these are the only
ones that, in principle, need further assessment.
The results for the spatal resoluton at zero distan-
ce from the detector are depicted in Table 2.




Where the value falls within the specifed 3.7 mm
resoluton given by Philips as reference .
Regarding sensitvity and COR, they were perfor-
med according to the manufacturers protocols,
and fall securely within the specifcatons.
Intrinsic uniformity, as opposite to extrinsic, falls
within the specifcatons as well.
Conclusion
The main conclusion that can be derived from this
study is that there is no substantal indicaton that
the collimators are unfted for clinical practce.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge prof. Pedro Almeida,
prof. Nuno Matela and Rui Parafta for scientfc advice.
The authors would also like to acknowledge prof. Marta Silva
and prof. Carlos Cordeiro for their help regarding the acquisit-
on of capillary tubes, which were critcal for some studies.
And last but not least, we acknowledge Ana Canudo, Dr. Carla
Oliveira, Diana Dantas, Melissa Botelho, Raquel Reis, Sandra
Chaves and Vanessa Santos for their support during the expe-
rimental tests.
References
[1] Internatonal Atomic Energy Agency (2009). IAEA Human Health Series No. 6 Quality Assurance of SPECT Systems. Vienna.
[2] Internatonal Atomic Energy Agency (2003). Quality Control Atlas for Scintllaton Camera Systems. Vienna.
[3] Natonal Electrical Manufacturers Associaton (2007). NEMA Standards Publicaton NU1-2007, Performance Measurements of Gamma Cameras. Rosslyn;
[4] Philips Medical Systems (2007). BrightView SPECT Manual, Instructons of Use. Release 1.0. USA.
[5] Phelps, Michael E. (2006). PET Physics, Instrumentaton, and Scanners. Springer. USA.
[6] Seret, Alain (2010). NEMA NU 1-2001 performance tests of four Philips Brightview cameras. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. 648, 89
-92.
Further informaton
First authors email:
- mauro.costa.sousa@gmail.com
First authors Linkedin profle:
- htps://www.linkedin.com/pub/mauro-
sousa/57/299/802
Introducton
Collimators are one of the main gamma ca-
mera components afectng image quality. Lo-
wer quality or damaged collimators may
afect performance parameters. In this way, a
robust periodical quality assurance (QA) pro-
tocol is of relevance to assure optmal clinical
image quality. This study aimed to assess the
performance of the parallel hole collimators
of a Philips Brightview gamma camera (Fig.1)
in terms of uniformity, septal angulaton, spa-
tal resoluton, sensitvity and centre of rotat-
on (COR).
Materials and Methods
The need to investgate the performance qua-
lity of its parallel hole collimators led to the
testng of the following sets of collimators:
low energy high resoluton (LEHR), medium
energy general purposes(MEGP) and high
energy general purposes (HEGP).
Fig. 2 depicts the workfow of the tests perfo-
med.
The main aspec is that it contains an inital
collimator integrity screening in terms of ex-
trinsic uniformity and septal angulaton as-
sessment.
Thus, the suggested workfow should keep
unnecessary tests from being performed.
Discussion
The high values for the extrinsic uniformity, may be
related to an actual overestmaton of the uniformi-
ty parameters, which was probably related to the
bad conditons in which the planar food source
was. The fact that the parameters are fairly consis-
tent amongst the diferent collimators and the good
results obtained in the intrinsic uniformity test fur-
ther contributes to consider the planar source as
the main source of bias.
The septal angulaton clearly showed that some re-
gions of the LEHR collimators had imperfectons in
terms of hole parallelism. This is actually typical for
LE collimators, which are typically foil constructed.
This fabricaton method (Fig. 4) is prone to errors in
terms of collimator hole misalignements. Even
though the test showed some imperfectons, these
dont have a substantal impact in clinical practce.
Additonally, the fairly good results obtained in the
spatal resoluton, sensitvity, and specially COR
tests further decreases the importance of these
specifc septal imperfectons.
The suggested protocol contributes to tme saving
since the inital screening aloows for the avoidance
of unecessary quality assurance tests.
It should be noted that the suggested protocol is for
a thorough collimator assessment, and that apart
from the uniformity and septal angulaton tests,
these QA protocols do not need to be performed
with a periodicity of more than 1 week.
Collimator Mean (mm) Std (mm)
LEHR1 3,9 mm 0,2 mm
LEHR2 3,9 mm 0,2 mm
Figure 1Philips
Brightview gam-
ma camera
Figure 2Collimator assessment workfow
Table 2Spatal resoluton results
Figure 4Foil
fabricaton
method
Results
Table 1 shows mean and standard deviaton values
for the extrinsic uniformity parameters in all col-
limators.




The obtained values show a disagreement with the
manufacturers limit values (below 6%)
[4]
.
Fig. 3 shows the results of the septal angulaton
test.
Uniformity Mean (%) Std (%)
Integral 9,5 0,2
Diferental (XX) 3,5 0,1
Diferental (YY) 3,3 0,3
Table 1Uniformity results for all collimators (UFOV)
Figure 3Septal angulaton results. From lef
to right, top to botom, LEHR1, MEGP2, HEG-
P1, LEHR2, MEGP2, HEGP2
References
[1] Internatonal Atomic Energy Agency (2009). IAEA Human Health Series No. 6 Quality Assurance of SPECT Systems. Vienna.
[2] Internatonal Atomic Energy Agency (2003). Quality Control Atlas for Scintllaton Camera Systems. Vienna.
[3] Natonal Electrical Manufacturers Associaton (2007). NEMA Standards Publicaton NU1-2007, Performance Measurements of Gamma Cameras. Rosslyn;
[4] Philips Medical Systems (2007). BrightView SPECT Manual, Instructons of Use. Release 1.0. USA.
[5] Phelps, Michael E. (2006). PET Physics, Instrumentaton, and Scanners. Springer. USA.
[6] Seret, Alain (2010). NEMA NU 1-2001 performance tests of four Philips Brightview cameras. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. 648, 89-92.