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Continuous depth-of-interaction encoding using phosphor-coated scintillators

Huini Du1, Yongfeng Yang1, Jarek Glodo2, Yibao Wu1, Kanai Shah2 and Simon R Cherry1

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We investigate a novel detector using a lutetium oxyorthosilicate (LSO) scintillator and YGG (yttrium–aluminum–gallium oxide:cerium, Y3(Al,Ga)5O12:Ce) phosphor to construct a detector with continuous depth-of-interaction (DOI) information. The far end of the LSO scintillator is coated with a thin layer of YGG phosphor powder which absorbs some fraction of the LSO scintillation light and emits wavelength-shifted photons with a characteristic decay time of ~50 ns. The near end of the LSO scintillator is directly coupled to a photodetector. The photodetector detects a mixture of the LSO light and the light emitted by YGG. With appropriate placement of the coating, the ratio of the light converted from the YGG coating with respect to the unconverted LSO light can be made to depend on the interaction depth. DOI information can then be estimated by inspecting the overall light pulse decay time. Experiments were conducted to optimize the coating method. 19 ns decay time differences across the length of the detector were achieved experimentally when reading out a 1.5 × 1.5 × 20 mm3 LSO crystal with unpolished surfaces and half-coated with YGG phosphor. The same coating scheme was applied to a 4 × 4 LSO array. Pulse shape discrimination (PSD) methods were studied to extract DOI information from the pulse shape changes. The DOI full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) resolution was found to be ~8 mm for this 2 cm thick array.


PACS

87.57.uk Positron emission tomography (PET)

85.60.Gz Photodetectors (including infrared and CCD detectors)

29.40.Mc Scintillation detectors

87.57.U- Nuclear medicine imaging

Subjects

Accelerators, beams and electromagnetism

Electronics and devices

Nuclear physics

Instrumentation and measurement

Optics, quantum optics and lasers

Medical physics

Particle physics and field theory

Dates

Issue 6 (21 March 2009)

Received 8 October 2008, in final form 12 December 2008

Published 3 March 2009



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