Emission tomography with a large-hole collimator (CACAO): a possible new way to improve radionuclide imaging.

This work aims to improve the quality of scintigraphy. It evaluates the use of a large-hole collimator, the Computer Aided Collimation Gamma Camera Project (CACAO), in SPECT. Acquisition data from the same object were simulated for CACAO and for a conventional collimator. Better signal-to-noise ratios were found for CACAO images, whatever the number of emitted photons. This work demonstrates that high-resolution images may be obtained with large-hole collimators. The combination of CACAO and pixilated detectors may further improve radionuclide imaging.