A hybrid coded-aperture and Compton camera based on cerium-doped Gd3Al2Ga3O12 scintillators coupled with multi-pixel photon counter arrays.

Abstract

In this study, we propose a hybrid coded-aperture and Compton camera based on cerium-doped Gd₃Al₂Ga₃O₁₂ (GAGG:Ce) scintillator arrays coupled with Multi-Pixel Photon Counter (MPPC) arrays. The sensitive detector of the gamma camera consists of a single GAGG:Ce crystal coupled with a single-chip MPPC unit module. An impedance bridge circuit and a 64-channel data acquisition system were employed to record the code-aperture events and Compton coincidence events. After the calibration of position and energy, the total energy resolution for 662 keV gamma-rays from ¹³⁷Cs was 6.6%. The hybrid camera had the characteristics of mechanical collimation and electronic collimation at the same time. In the code aperture mode, the reconstructed images were obtained by direct deconvolution and maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) methods. In the Compton imaging mode, the energy-dependent method was applied to order the sequence of Compton scatter events. The simple back-projection algorithm and list-mode MLEM algorithm were adopted for image reconstruction. Practical performances demonstrated that the angular resolutions in two modes were measured as 5.2° and 11.4°, respectively. In addition, the hybrid camera had a desirable imaging capability in a wide energy range (32 keV-2.6 MeV) and a wide field of view (∼210° in the horizontal direction). As for the sensitivity, the camera had a commercially available sensitivity level of localizing a ¹³⁷Cs point source, producing ∼0.026 µSv/h in 5 min. Furthermore, the function of distinction for different radiation sources was preliminarily realized.