ABSTRACT
The gamma camera is one of the most fundamental pieces of equipment in a modern nuclear medicine department. Its ability to image and track the biological distribution and kinetics of radiopharmaceuticals has revolutionized the field and paved the way for a broad range of functional and quantitative imaging studies. In this chapter we describe the fundamentals of the gamma camera by following the path of the gamma ray from emission to detection. The system gantry, which offers the gamma camera the flexibility for imaging in a wide range of orientations, is described. The scintillation crystal used to absorb the gamma ray and convert the energy into viable scintillation photons is discussed, as are the photomultiplier tubes used to detect those photons. Pulse readout and arithmetic is finally described to determine energy and position of the incoming gamma ray and produce the final scintillation image.
