ABSTRACT
A radiation detector has been developed to be applied for nuclear imaging in nuclear medicine. According to Townsend’s latest review [1], nuclear imaging technology has been migrating into the eld of nuclear medicine since the late 1940s. Today, the tomographic imaging of the human body using radioisotopes, such as positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon-emission computed tomography (SPECT), etc., is indispensable for visualizing the functions of biological mechanisms noninvasively, e.g., metabolism or neurotransmitter. The progress of tomographic imaging tools relates strongly to the progress that has been made in scintillation detector technology, involving both advances of photodetector technology and the discovery of novel materials for scintillators. Recently, the advent of a hybrid system of PET/ SPECT and X-ray computed tomography (CT) achieved precise superimposition of the functional image on the anatomical image. This property of the hybrid system brought benets to medical diagnosis, such as the whole-body health examination for cancer detection, and contributed signicantly to the spread of nuclear imaging apparatus into clinical use.
