Preliminary evaluation of a silicon strip detector for photon-counting spectral CT

• An edge-on silicon strip detector designed for photon-counting spectral computed tomography (CT) is presented. Progress on the development of an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) to process the pulses and sort them into energy bins is reported upon. The ASIC and detector are evaluated in terms of electronic noise, energy resolution, count rate linearity under high-frequency periodic pulses, threshold variation and gain. The high-frequency periodic pulses are injected both by means of an external pulse generator and a pulsed laser illuminating the silicon diode. The pulsed laser system has similar to 100 ps pulse width and thus generates near instantaneous pulses in the diode, thus mimicking real X-ray conversions. The evaluation shows a low thermal noise level of 0.77 key RMS, an energy resolution of 1.5 keV RMS when electron-hole pairs are generated in the detector diode by the laser injection. The test results furthermore indicate a good energy-discriminating capability of the detector with the thresholds spread out, assigning the external pulses to higher and higher energy bins as the pulse intensity is increased.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Fysik -- Atom- och molekylfysik och optik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Physical Sciences -- Atom and Molecular Physics and Optics (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Medicinteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Medical Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Photon counting

Silicon strip detector

ASIC

Spectral computed tomography

Laser test

TECHNOLOGY

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