Patent ID: 8017916

Claim:
A single gamma imaging system for planar cardiac imaging of the heart of a patient torso treated with a radioactive bolus in an energy range of 140 keV comprising: a first compact gamma imaging head positioned on a first side of and in close proximity to said patient torso, said first gamma imaging head in alignment with said heart and providing a first planar image; a second compact gamma imaging head positioned on a second side of and in close proximity to said patient torso, said second gamma imaging head in alignment with said heart and providing a second planar image; said first and second compact gamma imaging heads fixed with respect to one another and co-registered at an angle of 180 degrees relative to each other with the patient's heart encompassed by the resulting active field of view, said gamma imaging heads co-registered and operating in a range of 140-159 keV at a rate of up to 500 kHz; parallel hole collimators including parallel holes therein on each of said gamma imaging heads; said gamma imaging heads geometrically aligned such that each of said parallel holes in said first imaging head is aligned with a corresponding parallel hole in said second imaging head thereby creating co-linear parallel hole collimators having a one-to-one detector pixel correspondence between said imaging heads and enabling simultaneous acquisition of said first and second planar images; for each of said first and second planar images obtained at the same time, means for normalizing and fusing each of said images pixel-by-corresponding pixel to increase signal for any cardiac region viewed in two images obtained from said two opposed detector heads for the same time bin; and said imaging system having a resolution of 6-10 mm Full Width at Half Maximum (FWHM).