Guidance and Motion Control of Three-Degree-of-Freedom Manipulator Driven by a Tilting Collimator Scintillation

In our previous publications we have already discussed a possible use of a computer-guided manipulator for biomedical applications based on our patented method to determining the camera-to-object distance using the so-called tilting collima- tor (TC) technique. Tests about the accuracy of the object localization and the TC camera spatial resolution have already been conducted. A manipulator for simple mechani- cal operations has already been constructed in the Laboratory for Radiopharmaceuticals and Biomolecular Imaging (LRBI) of the LNL. It is coupled to a TC scintillation camera and it has been designed as a three-segmented arm consisting of three mutually perpendicular linear actuators. The system thus ensures three degrees of freedom motion of the manipulator pointer in a volume of 10x10x10cm 3 in the imaged object ? eld (under the camera). In this article we present the methods for guidance and motion control of the manipulator coupled with the TC scintillation camera.