Application of Electron Tracking Compton Camera (ETCC) in medical imaging

Sonoda, Shinya*; Nabetani, Akira*; Kimura, Hiroyuki*; Kabuki, Shigeto*; Takada, Atsushi*; Kubo, Hidetoshi*; Komura, Shotaro*; Sawano, Tatsuya*; Tanimori, Toru*; Matsuoka, Yoshihiro*; Mizutani, Yoshitaka*; Hatsukawa, Yuichi; Tsukada, Kazuaki  ; Nagai, Yasuki; Sato, Tetsuya   ; Asai, Masato  

We present the performance results using this new ETCC such as the imaging test using F-18 in point-like and rod-like phantoms with varying the intense of radiation. In addition, the measurementof Tc-95m which is produced by Japan Atomic Energy Agency was performed. Tc-95m emitsthe -rays with the energy, 204, 583, and 835 keV, and then an image with multi-energies is examined. The position resolution achieves less than about 8 degrees from 10 degrees at 511 keV by this improvement. Further improvement of the angular resolution (position resolution) will be presented until 2015 spring. Also, we are developing the next ETCC by increasing the thickness of the scintillator from 1 rad. to 2 rad. and the gas pressure from 1 atm to 3 atm which improvethe detection efficiency by a factor of 5 at 511 keV. By these improvements, the imaging time of mouse is expected to be reduced from several hours with to 20 minutes for lots of kinds of RIs with the energy band from 0.1-2 MeV.