Scintigraphic acquisition entropy (2). A new approach in the quality control of the scintillation camera performances

A new approach in the survey of the performances of gamma camera based on the entropy associated to the scintigraphic acquisition is presented. We take into account the sensitivity, the variation of the collimator response in function of the depth, the uncertainty on the number of counts, the multiplex effect and the spatial uncertainty. This entropy function is expressed in function of all the acquisition parameters: intrinsic crystal resolution, collimator characteristics, emitter object parameters and the source activity. The application of this method to the study of the influence of the collimation shows that the entropy associated to a collimator permits a best appreciation of the quality of the acquisition and therefore a better analysis of collimator performances. Likewise, the evolution of the entropy associated to the acquisition of a uniform source image is in agreement with the variation of the quality of image histogram. One shows, thus, that nor the spatial resolution, nor the sensitivity and nor the signal to noise ratio are able detect a variation of the image quality, when analysed one by one. (author)