Virtual gamma camera for educational purposes

Abstract

Nuc1ear medicine is a medical specialty that uses painless, safe, and cost- effective techniques to image the body and treat disease. In nuc1ear medicine, very small amounts of radioactive materials or radiopharmaceuticals 'are used to diagnose and treat diseases. The radiopharmaceuticals that are attracted to specific organs, bones, or tissues, emit gamma rays that can be detected by gamma or PET cameras. These cameras work with computers to form images, which provide data and information about the imaged area of body. The importance of Monte Car1o simulation in nuc1ear medicine imaging is increased by recent developments in nuc1ear medicine instrumentation and processing systems. The Monte Carlo method is very useful in medical physics due to the stochastic nature of radiation emission, transport and detection processes. Some of the applications of the Monte Car1o method in nuc1ear medical imaging are: Detector modeling, pharmacokinetic modeling, imaging systems and collimators design, attenuation and scatter correction techniques, image reconstruction algorithms, dosimetry and treatment planning. The aim of this work is to design a user-friendly interface that can perform a gamma camera simulation by using the Monte Carlo method. The purpose of this interface is to give the opportunity to student~ and researchers who have basic knowledge about gamma cameras, to understand the fundamentals of gamma camera imaging and to study the effects of the camera characteristics and parameters on the simulated images.|Keywords: Nuclear medicine, Monte Carlo simulations, gamma camera imaging, image quality.