Patent ID: 7292673

Claim:
A dual modality tomography apparatus comprising: a patient support device having a base adapted for mounting on a floor, said base being displaceable relative to the floor, and having a support plate adapted to receive a patient thereon, said support plate being displaceable along a displacement direction relative to said base, said support plate being deflected by a deflection curvature of the plate toward the floor due to the weight of the patient thereon; a first data acquisition system for a first tomography modality, and a second data acquisition system for a second tomography modality, said first and second data acquisition systems being disposed in succession along said displacement direction, said support plate being displaceable within each of said first and second data acquisition systems without changing said deflection curvature of the plate to allow each of said first and second data acquisition systems to acquire a set of image data from a same scan region of the patient on said support plate, with said plate exhibiting the same position in each of the sets of image data respectively acquired by the first and second data acquisition system; and a computer that geometrically fuses said sets of data respectively acquired by said first and second data acquisition systems into a single image of said scan region with no compensation for said deflection curvature.