• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.18-27
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• 2015

Since a Compton camera has high detection sensitivity due to electronic collimation and a good energy resolution, it is a potential imaging system for nuclear medicine. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of a Compton camera for multi-tracer imaging and proposed a rotating Compton camera to satisfy Orlov's condition for 3D imaging. Two software phantoms of 140 and 511 keV radiation sources were used for Monte-Carlo simulation and then the simulation data were reconstructed by listmode ordered subset expectation maximization to evaluate the capability of multi-tracer imaging in a Compton camera. And the Compton camera rotating around the object was proposed and tested with different rotation angle steps for improving the limited coverage of the fixed conventional Compton camera over the field-of-view in terms of histogram of angles in spherical coordinates. The simulation data showed the separate 140 and 511 keV images from simultaneous multi-tracer detection in both 2D and 3D imaging and the number of valid projection lines on the conical surfaces was inversely proportional to the decrease of rotation angle. Considering computation load and proper number of projection lines on the conical surface, the rotation angle of 30 degree was sufficient for 3D imaging of the Compton camera in terms of 26 min of computation time and 5 million of detected event number and the increased detection time can be solved with multiple Compton camera system. The Compton camera proposed in this study can be effective system for multi-tracer imaging and is a potential system for development of various disease diagnosis and therapy approaches.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.1747-1753
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• 2022

Compton imaging is the main method for locating radioactive hot spots emitting high-energy gamma-ray photons. In particular, this imaging method is crucial when the photon energy is too high for coded-mask aperture imaging methods to be effective or when a large field of view is required. Reconstruction of the photon source requires advanced Compton event processing algorithms to determine the exact position of the source. In this study, we introduce a novel method based on a Deep Learning algorithm with a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to perform Compton imaging. This algorithm is trained on simulated data and tested on real data acquired with Caliste, a single planar CdTe pixelated detector. We show that performance in terms of source location accuracy is equivalent to state-of-the-art algorithms, while computation time is significantly reduced and sensitivity is improved by a factor of ~5 in the Caliste configuration.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.51-61
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• 2009

A Compton camera, which is based on the geometrical interpretation of Compton scattering, is a very promising gamma-ray imaging device considering its several advantages over the conventional gamma-ray imaging devices: high imaging sensitivity, 3-D imaging capability from a fixed position, multi-tracing functionality, and almost no limitation in photon energy. In the present study, a Monte Carlo-based, user-friendly Compton imaging simulator was developed in the form of a graphical user interface (GUI) based on Geant4 and $MATLAB^{TM}$. The simulator was tested against the experimental result of the double-scattering Compton camera, which is under development at Hanyang University in Korea. The imaging resolution of the simulated Compton image well agreed with that of the measured image. The imaging sensitivity of the measured data was 2~3 times higher than that of the simulated data, which is due to the fact that the measured data contains the random coincidence events. The performance of a stacking-structure type Compton camera was evaluated by using the simulator. The result shows that the Compton camera shows its highest performance when it uses 4 layers of scatterer detectors.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.191-196
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• 2012

A double-scattering type Compton camera which is appropriate to imaging a high-energy gamma source has been developed for nuclear material surveillance at Hanyang University. The double-scattering type Compton camera can provide high imaging resolution; however, it has disadvantage of relatively low imaging sensitivity than existing single-scattering type Compton camera. In this study, we introduce a novel concept of a dual-mode Compton camera which incorporates two different types of Compton camera, i.e., single- and double-scattering type. The dual-mode Compton camera can operate high-resolution mode and high-sensitivity mode in a single system. To maximize its performance, the geometrical configuration was optimized by using Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation toolkit. In terms of imaging sensitivity, high-sensitivity mode had higher sensitivity than high-resolution mode up to 100 times while high imaging resolution of the double-scattering Compton camera was maintained.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.10
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• pp.3993-4006
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• 2024

Compton imaging excels at visualizing gamma rays in the range of several hundred kiloelectronvolts to several megaelectronvolts. However, this technique has limitations in the imaging of low-energy gamma rays. In contrast, collimatorless imaging technique determines the location of a source by analyzing the distribution of interactions. Because the collimatorless imaging technique excels at imaging low-energy gamma rays that are easily shielded by detector components, it can compensate for the shortcomings of the Compton imaging technique. In this study, we propose a dual-mode imaging technique that selects the imaging method depending on the target gamma-ray energy and fuses them during reconstruction. The collimatorless imaging method demonstrated high angular resolution at low energy levels, whereas the Compton image surpasses it starting from 200 keV within its reconstructible range. The angular resolution of the dual-mode image was between those of the two methods. The trend of the positional error of gamma ray energy was similar to that of the angular resolution, and the dual-mode method exhibited the lowest average error of 0.7°. The dual imaging method exhibited higher efficiency, figure of merit, and signal-to-noise ratio by utilizing events from both imaging modalities. In addition, we investigated the geometrical effects of various structures.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.4
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• pp.1259-1265
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• 2021

In the present study, a large-area hybrid gamma imaging system was designed by adopting coded aperture imaging on the basis of a large-area Compton camera to achieve high imaging performance throughout a broad energy range (100-2000 keV). The system consisting of a tungsten coded aperture mask and monolithic NaI(Tl) scintillation detectors was designed through a series of Geant4 Monte Carlo radiation transport simulations, in consideration of both imaging sensitivity and imaging resolution. Then, the performance of the system was predicted by Geant4 Monte Carlo simulations for point sources under various conditions. Our simulation results show that the system provides very high imaging sensitivity (i.e., low values for minimum detectable activity, MDA), thus allowing for imaging of low-activity sources at distances impossible with coded aperture imaging or Compton imaging alone. In addition, the imaging resolution of the system was found to be high (i.e., around 6°) over the broad energy range of 59.5-1330 keV.

• Biomedical Engineering Letters
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.383-392
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• 2018

For prompt gamma ray imaging for biomedical applications and environmental radiation monitoring, we propose herein a multiple-scattering Compton camera (MSCC). MSCC consists of three or more semiconductor layers with good energy resolution, and has potential for simultaneous detection and differentiation of multiple radio-isotopes based on the measured energies, as well as three-dimensional (3D) imaging of the radio-isotope distribution. In this study, we developed an analytic simulator and a 3D image generator for a MSCC, including the physical models of the radiation source emission and detection processes that can be utilized for geometry and performance prediction prior to the construction of a real system. The analytic simulator for a MSCC records coincidence detections of successive interactions in multiple detector layers. In the successive interaction processes, the emission direction of the incident gamma ray, the scattering angle, and the changed traveling path after the Compton scattering interaction in each detector, were determined by a conical surface uniform random number generator (RNG), and by a Klein-Nishina RNG. The 3D image generator has two functions: the recovery of the initial source energy spectrum and the 3D spatial distribution of the source. We evaluated the analytic simulator and image generator with two different energetic point radiation sources (Cs-137 and Co-60) and with an MSCC comprising three detector layers. The recovered initial energies of the incident radiations were well differentiated from the generated MSCC events. Correspondingly, we could obtain a multi-tracer image that combined the two differentiated images. The developed analytic simulator in this study emulated the randomness of the detection process of a multiple-scattering Compton camera, including the inherent degradation factors of the detectors, such as the limited spatial and energy resolutions. The Doppler-broadening effect owing to the momentum distribution of electrons in Compton scattering was not considered in the detection process because most interested isotopes for biomedical and environmental applications have high energies that are less sensitive to Doppler broadening. The analytic simulator and image generator for MSCC can be utilized to determine the optimal geometrical parameters, such as the distances between detectors and detector size, thus affecting the imaging performance of the Compton camera prior to the development of a real system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.10
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• pp.3822-3830
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• 2023

The large-area Compton camera (LACC), featuring significantly high detection sensitivity, was developed for high-speed localization of gamma-ray sources. Due to the high gamma-ray interaction event rate induced by the high sensitivity, however, the multiplexer-based data acquisition system (DAQ) rapidly saturated, leading to deteriorated energy and imaging resolution at event rates higher than 4.7 × 10³ s^-1. In the present study, a new simultaneous multi-channel DAQ was developed to improve the energy and imaging resolution of the LACC even under high event rate conditions (10⁴-10⁶ s^-1). The performance of the DAQ was evaluated with several point sources under different event rate conditions. The results indicated that the new DAQ offers significantly better performance than the existing DAQ over the entire energy and event rate ranges. Especially, the new DAQ showed high energy resolution under very high event rate conditions, i.e., 6.9% and 8.6% (for 662 keV) at 1.3 × 10⁵ and 1.2 × 10⁶ s^-1, respectively. Furthermore, the new DAQ successfully acquired Compton images under those event rates, i.e., imaging resolutions of 13.8° and 19.3° at 8.7 × 10⁴ and 10⁶ s^-1, which correspond to 1.8 and 73 μSv/hr or about 18 and 730 times the background level, respectively.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.107-114
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• 2009

A Compton camera, which is based on Compton kinematics, is a very promising gamma-ray imaging device in that it could overcome the limitations of the conventional gamma-ray imaging devices. In the present study, the image quality of a rotating Compton camera was evaluated by using 4-D Monte Carlo simulation technique and the applicability to nuclear industrial applications was examined. It was found that Compton images were significantly improved when the Compton camera rotates around a gamma-ray source. It was also found that the 3-D imaging capability of a Compton camera could enable us to accurately determine the 3-D location of radioactive contamination in a concrete wall for decommissioning purpose of nuclear facilities. The 4-D Monte Carlo simulation technique, which was applied to the Compton camera fields for the first time, could be also used to model the time-dependent geometry for various applications.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.10
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• pp.2361-2369
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• 2020

Compton cameras using large scintillators have been developed for high imaging sensitivity. These scintillator-based Compton cameras, however, mainly due to relatively low energy resolution, suffer from undesired background-radiation signals, especially when radioactive materials' activity is very low or their location is far from the Compton camera. To alleviate this problem for a large-size Compton camera, in the present study, a hybrid-type shielding system was designed that combines an active shield with a veto detector and a passive shield that surrounds the active shield. Then, the performance of the hybrid shielding system was predicted, by Monte Carlo radiation transport simulation using Geant4, in terms of minimum detectable activity (MDA), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and image resolution. Our simulation results show that, for the most cases, the hybrid shielding system significantly improves the performance of the large-size Compton camera. For the cases investigated in the present study, the use of the shielding system decreased the MDA by about 1.4, 1.6, and 1.3 times, increased the SNR by 1.2-1.9, 1.1-1.7, and 1.3-2.1 times, and improved the image resolution (i.e., reduced the FWHM) by 7-8, 1-6, and 3-5% for ¹³⁷Cs, ⁶⁰Co, and ¹³¹I point source located at 1-5 m from the imaging system, respectively.