Effect of Scattered Photons on Image Quality in an Industrial SPECT

The single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) systems, which provide three-dimensional images of radioactive material in the human body, is widely used in hospitals to obtain the functional information of the human body. This technology also has new opportunities of industrial applications, for example, to examine the spatial distribution and mixing characteristics of flow, which are considered as crucial information in the mixing reactor vessel at a refinery and petrochemical plant. The SPECT system to be used in the industry should be of different requirements and criteria because the size, shape, and material of the object are significantly different from those of a human body. In the present study, the cross-sectional image of a lab-scale flow system containing 99m Tc radioactive tracer was experimentally taken using an industrial SPECT system recently developed at KAERI, and the effect of the scattered photons on the image quality was investigated, by using a Monte Carlo simulation code MCNPX, in order to enhance the performance of the industrial SPECT