A new clinical scintillation camera with pulse tail extrapolation electronics

The performance of a novel scintillation camera, designed for high-event-rate capability was evaluated. The system consisted of a 400-mm field-of-view NaI(Tl) camera with 61 photomultiplier tubes and modified General Electric Starcam 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 bar phantom image quality, and misplaced events were evaluated for count rates up to 200 kcps in a 20% photopeak window. Results indicate that this camera design does not compromise image quality at normal clinical count rates and that at higher event rates, it can provide better image quality and increased sensitivity over many Anger cameras employed in nuclear medicine