Patent ID: 6956215

Claim:
A method of localizing a scintillation event in a scintillation camera having a plurality o photomultiplier (PM) tubes and a scintillation crystal, each PM tube having a position-intensity distribution curve which relates an output of a PM tube to a distance from the centre thereof to a scintillation event, the method comprising steps of: (1) preparing a position estimation, including: pre-establishing a position function representing a single most probable event point in which ideal loci of the PM tubes intersect with a maximum probability the ideal locus of a PMT tube representing a maximum probability circle, the ideal loci of the PM tubes being determined by an ideal position-intensity distribution curve, the position function being defined by a first variable term depending on the coordinates of the PM tubes and a second variable term depending on the radii of the ideal loci; (2) estimating a position of a scintillation event, including: measuring outputs of the PM tubes in response to the scintillation event; determining radii of real loci for the PM tubes based on the outputs of the PM tubes and the position-intensity distribution curves; and calculating the single most probable event point by substituting the coordinates of the PM tubes for the first variable term, and the radii of said real loci for the second variable term, and outputting the calculated single most probable event point as the estimation of the position of the scintillation event.