Techniques for producing an image of radioactive emissions using a compton camera

A method implemented on a processor comprising:

• a) receiving first data indicating locations of a plurality of voxels of target resolution v in a volume of a subject;
• b) collecting from each of a plurality of detectors in one or more stages of a Compton camera within a coincidence time interval, location and deposited energy from an interaction associated with each high energy particle source event in the subject volume, for a plurality of N source events in the subject volume;
• c) determining for each source event a cone of possible locations for the source event based on the locations and deposited energies collected from the plurality of detectors in one or more stages of the Compton camera,
• d) initiating an instance of an stochastic origins ensemble (SOE) iterative algorithm by selecting for each source event a random location on the cone of possible locations for a corresponding source event;
• e) determining an instance of a solution comprising a set of N solution locations for the N source events from the SOE iterative algorithm after L iterations;
• f) repeating steps d and e for a plurality of M instances of the SOE iterative algorithm selecting for each source event M different random locations on the cone to initiate the plurality of M instances and to determine a plurality of M instances of a solution;
• g) combining the plurality of M instances of the solution location for each source event to determine a combined solution location for each of the N source events;
• and
• h) presenting, on a display device, data indicating the combined solution location for at least one source event of the N source events.