Statistical and physical content of low-energy photons in nuclear medicine imaging

Limit in the energy resolution of present gamma camera technology prevents a total rejection of Compton events: inclusion of bad photons in the image is inescapable. Various methods acquiring data over a large portion of the spectrum have already been described. This paper investigates the usefulness of low energy photons using statistical and physical models. Holospectral Imaging, for instance, exploits correlation between energy frames to build an information related transformation optimizing primary photon image. One can also use computer simulation to show that a portion of low energy photons is detected at the same location (pixel) as pure primary photons. These events are for instance: photons undergoing scatter interaction in the crystal; photons undergoing a small angle backscatter or forwardscatter interaction in the medium, photons backscattered by the Pyrex into the crystal. For a 140 keV source in 10 cm of water and a 1/4 inch thick crystal, more than 6% of all the photons detected do not have the primary energy and still are located in the right 4 mm pixel. Similarly, it is possible to show that more than 5% of all the photons detected at 140 keV deposit their energy in more than one pixel. These results give additional support to techniques considering low energy photons and more sophisticated ways to segregate between good and bad events