简介: |
Prostate cancer is a very common disease in males. In the clinics, 40% of the prostate cancers may be missed using ultrasound-guided biopsy procedure. Currently available imaging modalities have low sensitivity and specificity to prostate cancer. New imaging methods that can detect small foci of prostate cancer and pin-point the targets in the biopsy procedure are highly demanded. Recently the research team at BNL built a compact trans-rectal gamma camera for high-resolution prostate-cancer imaging that uses Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CdZnTe or CZT) radiation detectors. CZT has high energy resolution, high spatial resolution, and high stopping power for gamma-rays. In medical imaging applications, a few-mm-thick CZT material can provide sufficient detection efficiency for 100-200-keV gamma rays. Because of these advantages, CZT detectors are becoming popular for several SPECT medical imaging applications. Because this camera can image the prostate gland at a short distance of 1-5 cm, it offers high detection efficiency and high spatial resolution, and potentially can detect prostate cancer at an early stage. In the past year, we placed this camera into clinical trials successfully. In this presentation, I will introduce the camera and report clinical results based on patient studies. |
