Open AccessPerformance improvement of Compton imaging of astatine-211 by optimising coincidence time windows
Author(s) -
Yuto Nagao,
Mitsutaka Yamaguchi,
Shigeki Watanabe,
Noriko S. Ishioka,
Naoki Kawachi,
Hiroshi Watabe
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of instrumentation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.741
H-Index - 84
ISSN - 1748-0221
DOI - 10.1088/1748-0221/16/12/c12031
Subject(s) - astatine , coincidence , polonium , compton scattering , physics , nuclear medicine , optics , materials science , nuclear physics , medicine , photon , pathology , alternative medicine , quantum mechanics , voltage
Astatine-211 is one of the promising radioisotopes for targeted alpha therapy. Optimising treatment strategies as well as determining the suitability of a given agent for a particular patient requires to image the time-dependent distribution of the targeted radiotherapeutic agent both in tumours and in normal tissues. Since the biodistribution of astatine is different from that of iodine, imaging astatine-211 directly is essential. In the previous study of astatine-211 Compton imaging, random coincidence events due to polonium K-shell X-rays were dominant and seemed to cause saturation of counts. Thus optimisation of the coincidence time windows is important to reduce random coincidence events. In this study, we have optimised the coincidence time windows of a Compton camera and improved the sensitivity, noise and spatial resolution of astatine-211 imaging.