Design of SPECT for BNCT to measure local boron dose with GAGG scintillator

Appl Radiat Isot. 2022 Mar:181:110056. doi: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2021.110056. Epub 2021 Dec 9.

Abstract

Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) is a promising cancer therapy, which has recently been in practical use in Japan especially using an accelerator. In BNCT real-time measurement of local boron dose is required. In the present study, a novel design of a SPECT system for BNCT (BNCT-SPECT) has been carried out to realize estimation of the local boron dose, i.e., treatment effect of BNCT. Necessary performance which BNCT community requires includes accuracy of 5% and spatial resolution of 5 mm, which are regarded to be difficult to realize. A possible design was investigated to meet the requirements. The design results we achieved are as follows: As for the elemental detection device, GAGG (3.5 × 3.5 × 30 mm3) was selected, and for the collimator, the collimator hole diameter was 3.5 mm, the collimator hole pitch was 4 mm and the collimator length was 26 cm. For the obtained performance with the design, the accuracy was 4.4% and the spatial resolution was 5.1 mm. Currently prior to production of the real system, a prototype of BNCT-SPECT is being developed to acquire real projection data to confirm the performance and examine our own image reconstruction method with the obtained projection data.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Boron Compounds / administration & dosage*
  • Boron Neutron Capture Therapy*
  • Humans
  • Neoplasms / diagnostic imaging
  • Neoplasms / radiotherapy
  • Particle Accelerators
  • Radiotherapy Dosage
  • Scintillation Counting*
  • Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon / instrumentation*
  • Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon / methods

Substances

  • Boron Compounds