My Gamma Cameras & Images

I was persuaded to put in this section as my web master thought it might interest people as background.

In my professional career, I designed and manufactured large medical cameras for cancer and physiological function imaging that used gamma rays instead of light.   These “ Gamma cameras” also known as “scintillation cameras” and “nuclear cameras” do not use film, but the gamma rays from the patient pass through a lead “lens” which makes the distribution the same from the patient as in the detector.  The detector converts the gamma rays into an incredibly small amount of light which is amplified to make the image.

The first camera was invented by Hal Anger and there is a photograph of him with me and the world’s first digital gamma camera, which I designed, is in the background.  This work finally allowed me to “draw” in a technical way to have components manufactured to be built into my equipment.  For you that have nothing better to do, you can search US and Canadian patents, mostly when I lived in Manotick.

Various of my cameras are shown and there is an image of me, I.E.S. Bone SPECT, in which the blacker spots in my spine are where the bone is healing following fractures in a cycling accident.  This form of imaging is not very clear or sharp because it is an image of growth and very little pharmaceutical can be given.

Some of my “photo” cameras are included and a special mention of my “travel” camera, the Olympus XA2 which took all the Swiss, Rome and Tahoe amongst others, on my work trips.