日本における核医学物理の進歩を振り返って

抄録

It has passed almost 40 years since gamma camera was first developed in Japan. This paper reviews the progress of the physics in nuclear medicine in Japan with emphases on instrumentation and quantification of radio-nuclide imaging. The topics include the progress of gamma camera, SPECT, PET and image reconstruction from projections. Various improvements are highlighted including new position arithmetic of gamma cameras, progress of spatial resolution of gamma cameras and PET scanners, analytical methods of attenuation correction in SPECT, move from 2D-PET scanners with septa to fully 3D-PET scanners, advance of the methods of image reconstruction for 3D-PET, efforts to speed up iterative image reconstruction algorithms, etc. Besides technical instrumentation, developments of key components such as scintillators, photosensors, etc. are also described.