By Dr. Tim Sandle
SCIENCE EDITOR
DIGITAL JOURNAL
October 10, 2025
Patient being positioned for MR study of the head and abdomen. — Image by Ptrump16. CC BY-SA 4.0
A newly developed detector promises to lower the cost and increase the quality of nuclear medicine. This offers many advantages, not least with current tools for nuclear medicine imaging being expensive and difficult to manufacture. The new tool captures sharp, high-resolution signals of fine features at a fraction of the cost.
Scientists led by Northwestern University and Soochow University in China have built the first perovskite-based detector that can capture individual gamma rays for SPECT imaging with record-breaking precision. The new tool could make common types of nuclear medicine imaging sharper, faster, cheaper and safer.
According to lead researcher Mercouri Kanatzidis: “Perovskites are a family of crystals best known for transforming the field of solar energy. Now, they are poised to do the same for nuclear medicine. This is the first clear proof that perovskite detectors can produce the kind of sharp, reliable images that doctors need to provide the best care for their patients.”
Kanatzidis adds: “Our approach not only improves the performance of detectors but also could lower costs,” said co-corresponding author Yihui He, a professor at Soochow University. “That means more hospitals and clinics eventually could have access to the best imaging technologies.”
Specifying SPECT
Nuclear medicine, like SPECT (single-photon emission computing tomography) imaging, works like an invisible camera. Physicians implant a tiny, safe, short-lived radiotracer in a specific part of a patient’s body. The tracer emits gamma rays, which pass outward through tissues and eventually hit a detector outside of the body. Each gamma ray is like a pixel of light. After collecting millions of these pixels, computers can construct a 3D image of working organs.
Current detectors, which are either made from cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) or sodium iodide (NaI), have several disadvantages. CZT detectors are incredibly expensive, sometimes reaching into the price range of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for a whole camera. Because CZT crystals are brittle and prone to cracking, these detectors also are difficult to manufacture.
While cheaper than CZT detectors, NaI detectors are bulky and produce blurrier images — like taking a photo through a foggy window.
New development
To overcome these issues, the scientists turned to perovskite crystals, a material that Kanatzidis has studied for more than a decade. In 2012, his group built the first solid-film solar cells made from perovskites. Then, in 2013, Kanatzidis discovered that single perovskite crystals were highly promising for detecting X-rays and gamma rays.
This breakthrough, enabled by his group’s growth of high-quality single crystals, sparked a worldwide surge of research and effectively launched a new field in hard radiation detection materials.
Building on this foundation, Kanatzidis led the crystal growth, surface engineering and device design for the new study. By carefully growing and shaping these crystals, the researchers created a pixelated sensor — just like the pixels in a smartphone camera — that delivers record-breaking clarity and stability.
The researchers developed the camera’s pixelated architecture, optimized the multi-channel readout electronics and carried out the high-resolution imaging experiments that validated the device’s capabilities.
In experiments, the detector was able to differentiate among gamma rays of different energies with the best resolution reported thus far. It also sensed extremely faint signals from a medical radiotracer (technetium-99m) commonly used in clinical practice and distinguished incredibly fine features, producing crisp images that could separate tiny radioactive sources spaced just a few millimeters apart.
The detector also remained highly stable, collecting nearly all the tracer’s signal without loss or distortion. Because these new detectors are more sensitive, patients potentially could require shorter scan times or smaller doses of radiation.
The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications, titled “Single photon γ-ray imaging with high energy and spatial resolution perovskite semiconductor for nuclear medicine”.
October 10, 2025
Patient being positioned for MR study of the head and abdomen. — Image by Ptrump16. CC BY-SA 4.0
A newly developed detector promises to lower the cost and increase the quality of nuclear medicine. This offers many advantages, not least with current tools for nuclear medicine imaging being expensive and difficult to manufacture. The new tool captures sharp, high-resolution signals of fine features at a fraction of the cost.
Scientists led by Northwestern University and Soochow University in China have built the first perovskite-based detector that can capture individual gamma rays for SPECT imaging with record-breaking precision. The new tool could make common types of nuclear medicine imaging sharper, faster, cheaper and safer.
According to lead researcher Mercouri Kanatzidis: “Perovskites are a family of crystals best known for transforming the field of solar energy. Now, they are poised to do the same for nuclear medicine. This is the first clear proof that perovskite detectors can produce the kind of sharp, reliable images that doctors need to provide the best care for their patients.”
Kanatzidis adds: “Our approach not only improves the performance of detectors but also could lower costs,” said co-corresponding author Yihui He, a professor at Soochow University. “That means more hospitals and clinics eventually could have access to the best imaging technologies.”
Specifying SPECT
Nuclear medicine, like SPECT (single-photon emission computing tomography) imaging, works like an invisible camera. Physicians implant a tiny, safe, short-lived radiotracer in a specific part of a patient’s body. The tracer emits gamma rays, which pass outward through tissues and eventually hit a detector outside of the body. Each gamma ray is like a pixel of light. After collecting millions of these pixels, computers can construct a 3D image of working organs.
Current detectors, which are either made from cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) or sodium iodide (NaI), have several disadvantages. CZT detectors are incredibly expensive, sometimes reaching into the price range of hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for a whole camera. Because CZT crystals are brittle and prone to cracking, these detectors also are difficult to manufacture.
While cheaper than CZT detectors, NaI detectors are bulky and produce blurrier images — like taking a photo through a foggy window.
New development
To overcome these issues, the scientists turned to perovskite crystals, a material that Kanatzidis has studied for more than a decade. In 2012, his group built the first solid-film solar cells made from perovskites. Then, in 2013, Kanatzidis discovered that single perovskite crystals were highly promising for detecting X-rays and gamma rays.
This breakthrough, enabled by his group’s growth of high-quality single crystals, sparked a worldwide surge of research and effectively launched a new field in hard radiation detection materials.
Building on this foundation, Kanatzidis led the crystal growth, surface engineering and device design for the new study. By carefully growing and shaping these crystals, the researchers created a pixelated sensor — just like the pixels in a smartphone camera — that delivers record-breaking clarity and stability.
The researchers developed the camera’s pixelated architecture, optimized the multi-channel readout electronics and carried out the high-resolution imaging experiments that validated the device’s capabilities.
In experiments, the detector was able to differentiate among gamma rays of different energies with the best resolution reported thus far. It also sensed extremely faint signals from a medical radiotracer (technetium-99m) commonly used in clinical practice and distinguished incredibly fine features, producing crisp images that could separate tiny radioactive sources spaced just a few millimeters apart.
The detector also remained highly stable, collecting nearly all the tracer’s signal without loss or distortion. Because these new detectors are more sensitive, patients potentially could require shorter scan times or smaller doses of radiation.
The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications, titled “Single photon γ-ray imaging with high energy and spatial resolution perovskite semiconductor for nuclear medicine”.
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