Evaluation of production samples of the scintillators LaBr3:Ce and LaCl3:Ce

We report on the evaluation of the performance of two recently developed scintillator materials, LaCl{sub 3}:Ce and LaBr{sub 3}:Ce, at the task of gamma ray spectroscopy. Their performance is compared to a standard scintillator used for gamma ray spectroscopy--a 25 mm diameter 25 mm tall cylinder of NaI:Tl. We measure the pulse height, energy resolution, and full-energy efficiency of production LaBr{sub 3}:Ce and LaCl{sub 3}:Ce scintillation crystals of different sizes and geometries for a variety of gamma-ray energies. Using production rather than specially selected crystals will establish whether immediate large-scale use is feasible. The crystal is excited by gamma rays from one of six isotopic sources ({sup 125}I, {sup 241}Am, {sup 57}Co, {sup 22}Na, {sup 137}Cs, and {sup 60}Co) placed 15 cm away from the scintillator. Our measurements show that both LaCl{sub 3} and LaBr{sub 3} outperform NaI:Tl in almost all cases. They outperform NaI:Tl at all energies for the photopeak fraction and counting rate measurements, and for energy resolution at higher energies (above 200 keV for LaCl{sub 3} and 75 keV for LaBr{sub 3}). The performance of production crystals is excellent and these scintillators should be considered for immediate use in systems where stopping power and energy resolution are crucial

Monte Carlo design of optimal wire mesh collimator for breast tumor imaging process.

This paper presents the modeling of breast tumor imaging process using wire mesh collimator gamma camera. Previous studies showed that the wire mesh collimator has a potential to improve the sensitivity of the tumor detection. In this paper, we extend our research significantly, to find an optimal configuration of the wire mesh collimator specifically for semi-compressed breast tumor detection, by looking into four major factors: weight, sensitivity, spatial resolution and tumor contrast. The numbers of layers in the wire mesh collimator is varied to optimize the collimator design. The statistical variations of the results are studied by simulating multiple realizations for each experiment using different starting random numbers. All the simulation environments are modeled using Monte Carlo N-Particle Code (MCNP). The quality of the detection is measured directly by comparing the sensitivity, spatial resolution and tumor contrast of the images produced by the wire mesh collimator and benchmarked that with a standard multihole collimator. The proposed optimal configuration of the wire mesh collimator is optimized by selecting the number of layers in wire mesh collimator, where the tumor contrast shows a relatively comparable value to the multihole collimator, when it is tested with uniformly semi-compressed breast phantom. The wire mesh collimator showed higher number of sensitivity because of its loose arrangement while the spatial resolution of wire mesh collimator does not shows much different compared to the multihole collimator. With a relatively good tumor contrast and spatial resolution, and increased in sensitivity, a new proposed wire mesh collimator gives a significant improvement in the wire mesh collimator design for breast cancer imaging process. The proposed collimator configuration is reduced to 44.09% from the total multihole collimator weight

A multi-threshold sampling method for TOF PET signal processing

As an approach to realizing all-digital data acquisition for positron emission tomography (PET), we have previously proposed and studied a multithreshold sampling method to generate samples of a PET event waveform with respect to a few user-defined amplitudes. In this sampling scheme, one can extract both the energy and timing information for an event. In this paper, we report our prototype implementation of this sampling method and the performance results obtained with this prototype. The prototype consists of two multi-threshold discriminator boards and a time-to-digital converter (TDC) board. Each of the multi-threshold discriminator boards takes one input and provides up to 8 threshold levels, which can be defined by users, for sampling the input signal. The TDC board employs the CERN HPTDC chip that determines the digitized times of the leading and falling edges of the discriminator output pulses. We connect our prototype electronics to the outputs of two Hamamatsu R9800 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) that are individually coupled to a 6.25 x 6.25 x 25mm{sup 3} LSO crystal. By analyzing waveform samples generated by using four thresholds, we obtain a coincidence timing resolution of about 340 ps and an {approx}18% energy resolution at 511 keV. We are also able to estimate the decay-time constant from the resulting samples and obtain a mean value of 44 ns with an {approx}9 ns FWHM. In comparison, using digitized waveforms obtained at a 20 GSps sampling rate for the same LSO/PMT modules we obtain {approx}300 ps coincidence timing resolution, {approx}14% energy resolution at 511 keV, and {approx}5 ns FWHM for the estimated decay-time constant. Details of the results on the timing and energy resolutions by using the multi-threshold method indicate that it is a promising approach for implementing digital PET data acquisition

Strontium and barium iodide high light yield scintillators

Europium-doped strontium and barium iodide are found to be readily growable by the Bridgman method and to produce high scintillation light yields

Scintillators with potential to supersede lanthanum bromide

New scintillators for high-resolution gamma ray spectroscopy have been identified, grown and characterized. Our development efforts have focused on two classes of high light yield materials: Europium-doped alkaline earth halides and Cerium-doped garnets. Of the halide single crystals we have grown by the Bridgman method - SrI{sub 2}, CaI{sub 2}, SrBr{sub 2}, BaI{sub 2} and BaBr{sub 2} - SrI{sub 2} is the most promising. SrI{sub 2}(Eu) emits into the Eu{sup 2+} band, centered at 435 nm, with a decay time of 1.2 {micro}s and a light yield of up to 115,000 photons/MeV. It offers energy resolution better than 3% FWHM at 662 keV, and exhibits excellent light yield proportionality. Transparent ceramics fabrication allows production of Gadolinium- and Terbium-based garnets which are not growable by melt techniques due to phase instabilities. While scintillation light yields of Cerium-doped ceramic garnets are high, light yield non-proportionality and slow decay components appear to limit their prospects for high energy resolution. We are developing an understanding of the mechanisms underlying energy dependent scintillation light yield non-proportionality and how it affects energy resolution. We have also identified aspects of optical design that can be optimized to enhance energy resolution

Performance of a facility for measuring scintillator non-proportionality

We have constructed a second-generation Compton coincidence instrument, known as the Scintillator Light Yield Non-proportionality Characterization Instrument (SLYNCI), to characterize the electron response of scintillating materials. While the SLYNCI design includes more and higher efficiency HPGe detectors than the original apparatus (five 25percent-30percent detectors vs. one 10percent detector), the most novel feature is that no collimator is placed in front of the HPGe detectors. Because of these improvements, the SLYNCI data collection rate is over 30 times higher than the original instrument. In this paper, we present a validation study of this instrument, reporting on the hardware implementation, calibration, and performance. We discuss the analysis method and present measurements of the electron response of NaI:Tl from two different samples. We also discuss the systematic errors of the measurement, especially those that are unique to SLYNCI. We find that the apparatus is very stable, but that careful attention must be paid to the energy calibration of the HPGe detectors