High resolution portable gamma cameras

In recent years, portable gamma cameras have become widespread as an aid to the surgeon in the various procedures of radioguided surgery (RGS), especially in combination with gamma probes. The main obstacle that has slowed the rapid spread of these instruments is related to the limited size of the area of investigation, namely field of view (FOV), often not adequate for routine diagnostic needs, while it has found greater applications in RGS. The development of these technologies allows today to have handy devices that find a stable collocation within surgical procedures and, when possible, in diagnostic investigations on small organs. The last 15 years have seen a growth in the proposals of the small field of investigation devices, typically with FOV of about 5 × 5 cm and low weight. Other detectors are distinguished by larger areas (20 cm diameter) and actually represent transportable devices, both in terms of weight and size. The latter have the advantage of finding a stable use especially in diagnostics while they find limited use in the operating room, given the size and bulk still voluminous. The use of portable gamma cameras in the operating room can be an advantage in relation to the recording of images that have validity as medical-legal documentation of the pre- and post-operative phases. Often their use sees these detectors in the testing of new protocols and uses in multiple localization techniques (e.g., sentinel lymph nodes, melanomas, and different cancer types). Nowadays, new technological developments are bringing improvements in the reduction of the overall size of the devices and localization accuracy (i.e., spatial resolution) such as to allow their use in techniques combined with navigation systems within the operating room. Further developments should be directed to the miniaturization of devices capable of being used as intracorporeal detectors that can pave the way to investigations in laparoscopy and PET applications in the operating room.