With the advance of radiopharmaceuticals and imaging facilities, the utilities of nuclear medicine in theranostics of oncology, cardiovascular and neurologic applications are well recognized. Nuclear medicine physics aims to improve diagnostic accuracy and treatment outcome by correcting different image degradation factors and developing new instrumentations, which can also be used to reduce patients’ radiation dose and scan time. This project develops: (i) a one-stop personalized 3D radionuclide therapy dosimetric software (BIGDOSE) for clinical implementation of precision-based internal dose calculation; (ii) a multi-purpose multi-pinhole collimator for improved single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in preclinical rat imaging, clinical cardiac and brain imaging; (iii) an “interpolated CT” algorithm combined with an active breathing controller to reduce the misalignment and motion artifacts in nuclear medicine imaging. Besides solid scientific publications, the research output of this project receives many international awards and recognitions, opening a new chapter of nuclear medicine physics research in Macao. 

Fig 1 The output interface of 3D internal dose calculation software BIGDOSE

Fig 2 A six-pinhole collimator for small animal imaging (left top); A twelve-pinhole collimator for clinical cardiac perfusion imaging (left bottom); A nine-pinhole collimator for clinical brain imaging mounted on a clinical SPECT scanner (right).