Trajectory optimization for intra-operative nuclear tomographic imaging

Diagnostic nuclear imaging modalities like SPECT typically employ gantries to ensure a densely sampled geometry of detectors in order to keep the inverse problem of tomographic reconstruction as well-posed as possible. In an intra-operative setting with mobile freehand detectors the situation changes significantly, and having an optimal detector trajectory during acquisition becomes critical. In this paper we propose an incremental optimization method based on the numerical condition of the system matrix of the underlying iterative reconstruction method to calculate optimal detector positions during acquisition in real-time. The performance of this approach is evaluated using simulations. A first experiment on a phantom using a robot-controlled intra-operative SPECT-like setup demonstrates the feasibility of the approach.