Teaching the principles of X-ray CT and SPECT using optical CT, glowsticks and a scaled anthropomorphic phantom

Teaching demonstrations of computerized tomography (CT) and Single-Photon Emission Tomography (SPECT) to biomedical engineering and medical physics students is hampered by a limited accessibility to clinical scanners, especially during day time. The use of ionizing radiation and radioactive sources in X-ray CT and SPECT further complicates the design of a teaching laboratory session. We here propose an inexpensive and safe educational demonstration of CT and SPECT on an anthropomorphic phantom whereby a visible light source serves as source and a CCD camera serves as detector. The equivalent of a SPECT radionuclide in optical CT scanning is a chemiluminescent material which can be obtained relatively inexpensive in the form of party glow sticks. The proposed teaching tool comprises several learning outcomes such as hands-on construction of the scanner, the acquisition of images and image reconstruction. Also, different imaging artefacts can be simulated and investigated.