CHICAGO - Gamma camera developer Dilon Technologies made its RSNA debut this week with a new small-field-of-view gamma camera optimized for scintimammography. The Newport News, VA, company’s Dilon 6800 system is designed to overcome some of the technical limitations encountered when general-purpose gamma cameras are used for breast imaging.
Scintimammography is a still-developing clinical application in which radiopharmaecuticals are used to locate tumor activity in the breast. To date, most research in the technology has been conducted with conventional gamma cameras using special patient tables modified for breast imaging.
Dilon believes that the imaging architecture of conventional cameras, with sodium iodide scintillation crystals and photomultiplier tubes, results in lower resolution in breast imaging. Such cameras cannot be positioned close enough to patients at the appropriate angles, and have "dead space" that creates a problem when imaging small regions, according to the company.
Dilon 6800 uses a detector design that incorporates over 3,000 3 mm x 3 mm pixelized scintillation crystals and 48 miniature photomultiplier tubes, resulting in a detector measuring only 6 in x 8 in with 0.4 in of dead space. The detector is also mounted on an articulated arm that can achieve all standard mammographic imaging orientations. The design is based on technologies first developed at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, VA.
Dilon 6800 has received 510(k) clearance from the Food and Drug Administration, and is in clinical trials at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Dilon expects to begin shipping the system by the end of the first quarter of 2000.
By AuntMinnie.com staff writersDecember 2, 1999
