• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제54권7호
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• pp.2592-2598
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• 2022

Research groups in the field of PET instrumentation are studying time-of-flight(TOF) technology to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of PET images. Scintillation light transport and collection plays an important role in improving the coincidence resolving time(CRT) of PET detector based on a pixelated crystal array. Four crystal arrays were designed by the different optical reflection configuration such as external reflectors and surface treatment on the CRT and compared with the light output, energy resolution and CRT. The design proposed in the study was composed of 8 × 8 LYSO crystal array consisted of 3 × 3 × 15 mm³ pixels. The entrance side was roughened while the other five surfaces were polished. Four sides of all crystal pixels were wrapped with ESR-film, and the entrance surface was covered by Teflon-tape. The design provided an excellent timing resolution of 210 ps and improved the CRT by 16% compared to the conventional method using a polishing treatment and ESR-film. This study provided a method for improving the light output and CRT of a pixelated scintillation crystal-based brain TOF PET detector. The proposed configuration might be an attractive detector design for TOF brain PET requiring fast timing performance with high cost-effectiveness.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권10호
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• pp.2346-2352
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• 2020

Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is the noninvasive method to diagnose osteoporosis disease characterized by low bone mass and deterioration of bone tissue. Many global companies and research groups have developed the various DXA detectors using a direct photon-counting detector such as a cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) sensor. However, this approach using CZT sensor has some drawback such as the limitation of scalability by high cost and the loss of efficiency due to the requirement of a thin detector. In this study, a SiPM based DXA system was developed and its performance evaluated experimentally. The DXA detector was composed of a SiPM sensor coupled with a single LYSO scintillation crystal (3 × 3 × 2 ㎣). The prototype DXA detector was mounted on the dedicated front-end circuit consisting of a voltage-sensitive preamplifier, pulse shaping amplifier and constant fraction discriminator (CFD) circuit. The SiPM based DXA detector showed the 34% (at 59 keV) energy resolution with good BMD accuracy. The proposed SiPM based DXA detector showed the performance comparable to the conventional DXA detector based on CZT.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• 제40권2호
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• pp.73-78
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• 2015

본 연구에서는 실리콘 광 증배소자(Silicon photomultiplier)와 Ce:GAGG 섬광체 단결정을 이용한 섬광검출기를 제작하고, 감마선 분광특성 분석을 통해 기존에 상용화된 LYSO, CsI:Tl 섬광체와의 분광특성을 비교하였다. 섬광체 단결정의 크기는 $3{\times}3{\times}20mm^3$ 이며 $3{\times}3mm^2$ 실리콘 광 증배소자를 이용하여 섬광검출기를 제작한 후, 표준 감마선원인 $^{133}Ba$, $^{22}Na$, $^{137}Cs$, $^{60}Co$에 대한 에너지 분해능을 각각 측정하고 비교하였다. 그 결과 Ce:GAGG 섬광검출기의 감마선에 대한 에너지 분해능은 $^{133}Ba$ 0.356 MeV에서 13.5%, $^{22}Na$ 0.511 MeV에서 6.9%, $^{137}Cs$ 0.662 MeV에서 5.8% 그리고 $^{60}Co$ 1.33 MeV에서 2.3%의 분광 특성을 확인 할 수 있었다.

• 한국방사선학회논문지
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• 제13권6호
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• pp.841-846
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• 2019

본 연구에서는 섬광결정과 광센서의 정렬 오차가 TOF-PET 검출기 성능에 미치는 영향성을 정량적으로 평가하였다. 한 쌍 TOF-PET 검출기는 3 mm × 3 mm × 20 mm 체적을 갖는 LYSO 섬광체와 3.07 mm × 3.07 mm 크기의 GAPD 광센서로 구성된다. 아날로그 출력신호는 증폭 및 균일도 보정이 수행되었고, 오실로스코프 기반 데이터 획득 장치에서 신호처리되었다. 각 검출기 정렬 오차는 0.0 mm, 0.5 mm, 1.0 mm, 1.5 mm 를 각각 적용하여 총 16단계의 정렬 오차를 발생시켰다. 검출기 정렬 오차가 증가함에 따라 광절정위치는 약 400 mV에서 약 250 mV로 감소하였다. 또한, 에너지분해능은 11.6%에서 16.2%로, 시간분해능은 477 ps에서 632 ps로 저하되었다. 이 결과는 검출기 정렬 오차가 TOF-PET 검출기 성능저하에 큰 영향성을 내포함을 시사한다.