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Performance evaluation of a depth-of-interaction detector by use of position-sensitive PMT with a super-bialkali photocathode

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Abstract

Our purpose in this work was to evaluate the performance of a 4-layer depth-of-interaction (DOI) detector composed of GSO crystals by use of a position-sensitive photomultiplier tube (PMT) with a super-bialkali photocathode (SBA) by comparing it with a standard bialkali photocathode (BA) regarding the ability to identify the scintillating crystals, energy resolution, and timing resolution. The 4-layer DOI detector was composed of a 16 × 16 array of 2.9 × 2.9 × 7.5 mm3 GSO crystals for each layer and an 8 × 8 multi-anode array type position-sensitive PMT. The DOI was achieved by a reflector control method, and the Anger method was used for calculating interacting points. The energy resolution in full width at half-maximum (FWHM) at 511 keV energy for the top layer (the farthest from the PMT) was improved and was 12.0 % for the SBA compared with the energy resolution of 12.7 % for the BA. As indicators of crystal identification ability, the peak-to-valley ratio and distance-to-width ratio were calculated; the latter was defined as the average of the distance between peaks per the average of the peak width. For both metrics, improvement of several percent was obtained; for example, the peak-to-valley ratio was increased from 1.78 (BA) to 1.86 (SBA), and the distance-to-width ratio was increased from 1.47 (BA) to 1.57 (SBA). The timing resolution (FWHM) in the bottom layer was improved slightly and was 2.4 ns (SBA) compared with 2.5 ns (BA). Better performance of the DOI detector is expected by use of a super bialkali photocathode.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. H. Ishibashi of Hitachi Chemical and Mr. M. Nakamura of the Electron Tube Division, Hamamatsu Photonics K.K., for providing data on emission spectra and quantum efficiencies, respectively.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biophysics Molecular Imaging Center, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, 4-9-1 Anagawa, Inage-ku, Chiba, 263-8555, Japan

    Yoshiyuki Hirano, Naoko Inadama, Fumihiko Nishikido, Eiji Yoshida, Hideo Murayama & Taiga Yamaya

  2. Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoicho, Inage-ku, Chiba, 263-8522, Japan

    Munetaka Nitta

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  1. Yoshiyuki Hirano
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  2. Munetaka Nitta
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Correspondence to Yoshiyuki Hirano.

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Hirano, Y., Nitta, M., Inadama, N. et al. Performance evaluation of a depth-of-interaction detector by use of position-sensitive PMT with a super-bialkali photocathode. Radiol Phys Technol 7, 57–66 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12194-013-0231-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12194-013-0231-4

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