• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.56-63
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• 2024

In high radiation fields, gamma cameras suffer from pulse pile-up, resulting in poor energy resolution, count losses, and image distortion. To overcome this problem, various methods have been introduced to reduce the size of the aperture or pixel, reject the pile-up events, and correct the pile-up events, but these technologies have limitations in terms of mechanical design and real-time processing. The purpose of this study is to develop a real-time gamma camera to evaluate the radioactive contamination in high radiation fields. The gamma camera is composed of a pinhole collimator, NaI(Tl) scintillator, position sensitive photomultiplier (PSPMT), signal processing board, and data acquisition (DAQ). The pulse pile-up is corrected in real-time with a field programmable gate array (FPGA) using the start time correction (STC) method. The STC method corrects the amplitude of the pile-up event by correcting the time at the start point of the pile-up event. The performance of the gamma camera was evaluated using a high dose rate ¹³⁷Cs source. For pulse pile-up ratios (PPRs) of 0.45 and 0.30, the energy resolution improved by 61.5 and 20.3%, respectively. In addition, the image artifacts in the ¹³⁷Cs radioisotope image due to pile-up were reduced.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.1406-1416
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• 2019

In this research, a multi-slit prompt-gamma camera was developed to locate the distal dose falloff of the proton beam spots in spot scanning proton therapy. To see the performance of the developed camera, therapeutic proton beams were delivered to a solid plate phantom and then the prompt gammas from the phantom were measured using the camera. Our results show that the camera locates the 90% distal dose falloff (= d90%), within about 2-3 mm of error for the spots which are composed $3.8{\times}10^8$ protons or more. The measured location of d90% is not very sensitive to the irradiation depth of the proton beam (i.e., the depth of proton beam from the phantom surface toward which the camera is located). Considering the number of protons per spot for the most distal spots in typical treatment cases (i.e., 2 Gy dose divided in 2 fields), the camera can locate d90% only for a fraction of the spots depending on the treatment cases. However, the information of those spots is still valuable in that, in the multi-slit prompt-gamma camera, the distal dose falloff of the spots is located solely based on prompt gamma measurement, i.e., not referring to Monte Carlo simulation.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.65-77
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• 1995

A new gamma camera using a-Si : H photodetectors has been designed for the imaging of heart and other small organs. In this new design the photomultiplier tubes and the position sensing circuitry are replaced by 2-D array of a-Si : H p-i-n pixel photode tectors and readout circuitry which are built on a substrate. Without the photomultiplier tubes this camera is light weight, hence can be made portable. To predict the characteristics and the performance of this new gamma camera we did Monte Carlo simulations. In the simulations 128${\times}$128 imaging array of various pixel sixes were used. $\^$99m/Tc(140keV)and $\^$201/Tl(70keV) were used as radiation sources. From the simulations we could obtain the resolution of the camera and ther overall system, and the blurring effects due to scattering in the phantom. Using the Wiener filter for image processing, restoration of the blurred image could be achieved. Simulation results of a-Si : H based gamma camera were compared with those of a conwentional gamma camera.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.8
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• pp.2873-2878
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to perform radiation monitoring by acquiring gamma images and real-time optical images for ^99mTc vial source using charge couple device (CCD) cameras equipped with the proposed compact gamma camera. The compact gamma camera measures 86×65×78.5 mm³ and weighs 934 g. It is equipped with a metal 3D printed diverging collimator manufactured in a 45 field of view (FOV) to detect the location of the source. The circuit's system uses system-on-chip (SoC) and field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA) to establish a good connection between hardware and software. In detection modules, the photodetector (multi-pixel photon counters) is tiled at 8×8 to expand the activation area and improve sensitivity. The gadolinium aluminium gallium garnet (GAGG) measuring 0.5×0.5×3.5 mm³ was arranged in 38×38 arrays. Intrinsic and extrinsic performance tests such as energy spectrum, uniformity, and system sensitivity for other radioisotopes, and sensitivity evaluation at edges within FOV were conducted. The compact gamma camera can be mounted on unmanned equipment such as drones and robots that require miniaturization and light weight, so a wide range of applications in various fields are possible.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.71-75
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• 1982

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2002

Effect of scatter media materials and thickness, located between radioactivity and small gamma camera, on imaging characteristics was evaluated. The small gamma camera developed for breast imaging was consisted of collimator, NaI(T1) crystal(60$\times$60$\times$6 ㎣), PSPMT(position sensitive photomultimplier tube), NIMs and personal computer. Monte Carlo simulation was performed to evaluate the system sensitivity with different scatter media thickness(0~8 cm) and materials(air and acrylic) with parallel hole collimator and diverging collimator. The sensitivity and spatial resolution was measured using the small gamma camera with the same condition applied to the simulation. Counts was decreased by 10%(air) and 54%(acryl) with the parallel hole collimator and by 35%(air) and 63%(acryl) with the diverging collimator. Spatial resolution was decreased as increasing the thickness of scatter media. This study substantiate the importance of a gamma camera positioning and the minimization of the distance between detector and target lesion in the clinical application of a gamma camera.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.257-261
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• 2004

A coded-aperture gamma camera was developed to increase the sensitivity of a pin hole camera made with a pixellated CsI(Tl) scintillator and a position-sensitive photomultiplier tube. The modified round-hole uniformly redundant array of pixel size $13{\times}11$ was chosen as a coded mask considering the detector spatial resolution. The performance of the coded-aperture camera was compared with the pin hole camera using various forms of Tc-99m source to see the improvement of signal-to-noise ratio or the improvement of the sensitivity. The image quality is much improved despite of a slight degradation of the spatial resolution. Though the camera and the test were made for low energy case, but the concept of the coded-aperture gamma camera could be effectively used for the radioactive environmental monitoring and other applications.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.9
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• pp.3422-3428
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• 2022

The prompt gamma imaging (PGI) technique is considered as one of the most promising approaches to estimate the range of proton beam in the patient and unlock the full potential of proton therapy. In the PGI technique, a dedicated algorithm is required to estimate the range of the proton beam from the prompt gamma (PG) distribution acquired by a PGI system. In the present study, a new range estimation algorithm was developed for a multi-slit prompt-gamma camera, one of PGI systems, to estimate the range of proton beam with high accuracy. The performance of the developed algorithm was evaluated by Monte Carlo simulations for various beam/phantom combinations. Our results generally show that the developed algorithm is very robust, showing very high accuracy and precision for all the cases considered in the present study. The range estimation accuracy of the developed algorithm was 0.5-1.7 mm, which is approximately 1% of beam range, for 1×10⁹ protons. Even for the typical number of protons for a spot (1×10⁸), the range estimation accuracy of the developed algorithm was 2.1-4.6 mm and smaller than the range uncertainties and typical safety margin, while that of the existing algorithm was 2.5-9.6 mm.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1998 no.11
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• pp.303-304
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• 1998

We investigated the effects of scintillation crystal surface treatment on gamma camera imaging. The NaI(Tl) and CsI(Tl) (20 mm (dia.) $\times10mm$ (thick) plate) scintillators were chosen for this study. Two different surface treatments, white and black reflectors, were applied to NaI(Tl) and CsI(Tl). The optical properties of generated scintillation light were evaluated using Monte Carlo simulation and postion sensitive photo multiplier tube (PSPMT). We measured sensitivity, energy resolution and spatial resolution of a gamma camera system with the scintillators coupled to a PSPMT. Based on the results, we concluded that the careful consideration of surface treatments of the scintillator was necessary in order to develop the gamma camera having good sensitivity and spatial resolution.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.533-538
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• 2019

The mechanical-collimation imaging is the most mature technology in prompt gamma (PG) imaging which is considered the most promising technology for beam range verification in proton therapy. The purpose of the present study is to compare the performances of two mechanical-collimation PG cameras, knife-edge (KE) camera and multi-slit (MS) camera. For this, the PG cameras were modeled by Geant4 Monte Carlo code, and the performances of the cameras were compared for imaginary point and line sources and for proton beams incident on a cylindrical PMMA phantom. From the simulation results, the KE camera was found to show higher counting efficiency than the MS camera, being able to estimate the beam range even for $10^7$ protons. Our results, however, confirmed that in order to estimate the beam range correctly, the KE camera should be aligned, at least approximately, to the location of the proton beam range. The MS camera was found to show lower efficiency, being able to estimate the beam range correctly only when the number of the protons is at least $10^8$. For enough number of protons, however, the MS camera estimated the beam range correctly, errors being less than 1.2 mm, regardless of the location of the camera.