performance assessment of a channel multi-pinhole collimator for myocardial perfusion imaging with spect: a monte carlo simulation

While conventional parallel-hole collimators are widely used in myocardial perfusion imaging (mpi) with spect, they are suboptimal in balancing the existing sensitivity-resolution compromise. therefore, multi-pinhole collimation has been proposed to address the problem. in the present study, a channel multi-pinhole collimated spect scanner is modeled and then simulated using the gate monte carlo simulation. the multi-pinhole collimator comprises eight apertures. the material, diameter, and height of the apertures were assumed to be varying. a comparison with conventional single-pinhole was also conducted. the results show that increasing the hole diameter leads to degraded spatial resolution for the multi-pinhole collimator. compared to the single-pinhole, the multi-pinhole collimators suffer from projection overlapping and thus deteriorated spatial resolution. the findings confirm that the channel multi-pinhole collimators outperform the single-pinhole apertures by providing much higher sensitivity at the expense of slightly lower spatial resolution and therefore would be the collimator of choice for mpi with spect.