Development of a device for immobilization of head and correlation of functional-anatomical brain images

The excellent resolution of brain imaging modalities has important contributions in the diagnosis of brain diseases. However, involuntary movement by the patient may cause poor image quality. In this study, we developed a device to help keep a patient's head immobilized during brain image acquisition, for comparison between each follow-up study, and for functional-anatomical image correlation.

This device includes an acrylic material head supporter and a thermoplastic material facemask. The head supporter and the facemask can be firmly attached as a whole to support the head in a fixed position. Two capillary tubes filled with technetium-99m solution were placed perpendicularly on one side of the facemask as fiducial for imaging correlation between different studies. Ten patients, who each had two technetium-99m hexamethyl propyleneamine oxime (99mTc-HMPAO) brain single photon emission computer tomography (SPECT), were tested with this device for imaging.

Three-dimensional cine motion and sectional imaging were displayed and confirmed head immobilization in all of these studies. In addition, the 99mTc fiducial were useful in the comparison of head positions among the different studies. In five subjects, the device also proved to be useful in functional-anatomical correlation among SPECT, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and computed tomography (CT) images.

In conclusion, this device has been developed and found to be useful in (1) keeping patient's head immobilization, (2) keeping consistent head position for follow-up studies, and (3) SPECT, MRI and CT functional-anatomical imaging correlation.