Investigation of the potential use of LaBr3:Ce scintillators for scintimammography imaging

The motivation of this study is to exploit the high light yield and excellent energy resolution of LaBr3:Ce scintillators compared with NaI(Tl) crystal in scintimammograpic imaging systems. A dedicated gamma camera and 3D phantom were modelled using GATE Monte Carlo code under a variety of imaging situations including lession sizes, tumour activity-to-background ratios and tumour depths. The major finding of the present study is that LaBr3:Ce crystal-based cameras have the potential to detect small lesions (≤10 mm) at clinical TBR.