Imaging in Nuclear Medicine with Incoherent Holography

One of the principal concerns in nuclear medicine is imaging the spatial distribution of tracer amounts of gamma emitting radiopharmaceuticals which have been intravenously administered to patients. These images are customarily formed on a gamma ray detector by means of lead pinholes or multichannel collimators. In practice these apertures yield only 1 cm spatial resolution and geometric efficiencies of 10-4. This paper describes the use of a lead Fresnel zone plate aperture in conjunction with an image intensifier camera to produce coded images of gamma sources. These images possess properties similar to holograms. This method shows promise of a factor of 4 or 5 improvement in resolution, a factor of 10 improvement in efficiency and gives 3 dimensional information about the object.