Multiheaded rotating gamma cameras in cardiac single-photon emission computed tomographic imaging.

Multiheaded rotating gamma cameras can do more than simply decrease the time required for cardiac single-photon emission computed tomographic (SPECT) acquisitions. They give their users a flexibility to improve image quality that cannot be achieved so easily with single-headed systems. Multiheaded cameras can be used to acquire quickly those radiopharmaceuticals whose distributions washout very rapidly, increase count levels in noisy images without lengthening imaging time, permit high-resolution collimation or electrocardiographic gating with little or no decrease in counts, or acquire transmission images for attenuation correction concurrently with an emission study. This new generation of SPECT scanners gives the nuclear cardiology community a unique opportunity to create a new generation of cardiac SPECT images.