Small animal imaging by single photon emission using pinhole and coded aperture collimation

The aim of this paper is to investigate the basic properties and limits of the small animal imaging systems based on single photon detectors. The detectors for radio imaging of small animals are challenging because of the very high spatial resolution needed, possibly coupled with high efficiency to allow dynamic studies. These performances are hardly attainable with single photon technique because of the collimator that limits both spatial resolution and sensitivity. In this paper we describe a simple desktop detector based on pixellated NaI(Tl) scintillator array coupled with a pinhole collimator and a PSPMT, the Hamamatsu R2486. The limits of such systems as well as the way to overcome them will be shown. In fact better light sampling at the anode level would allow better pixel identification for higher number of pixel that is one of the parameters defining the image quality. Also the spatial resolution would improve. The performances of such layout are compared with others using PSPMTs differing from R2486 for the light sampling at the anode level and different areas. We show how a further step, namely the substitution of the pinhole collimator with a coded aperture, will allow a great improvement in system sensitivity while maintaining very good spatial resolution, possibly submillimetric. Calculations and simulations show that sensitivity would improve by a factor of 50.