Fast Timing with BGO (and other Scintillators) on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Prompt Gamma Imaging


Fast Timing with BGO (and other Scintillators) on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Prompt Gamma Imaging

Petzoldt, J.; Roemer, K.; Kormoll, T.; Berthel, M.; Dreyer, A.; Enghardt, W.; Fiedler, F.; Hueso-Gonzalez, F.; Golnik, C.; Kirschke, T.; Wagner, A.; Pausch, G.

Particle therapy is supposed to be an advanced treatment modality compared to conventional radiotherapy because of the well-defined range of the ions. Prompt gamma rays, produced in nuclear reactions between ion and nuclei, can be utilized for real-time range verification to exploit the full potential of particle therapy. Several devices have been investigated in the field of Prompt Gamma Imaging (PGI), like Slit and Compton Cameras. The latter need very high detection efficiency as well as good time and energy resolution, requiring a versatile scintillation detector. In positron emission tomography (PET), LSO and LYSO are known for their good timing resolution, while the lower cost alternative BGO shows worse performance. In PGI however, where gamma rays have energies up to 10 MeV, the light output of a scintillator is up to 20 times larger compared to PET with E gamma = 511 keV. This reduces the statistical contribution of the time resolution, which is the dominant part in case of BGO. Thus, BGO could be a reasonable alternative to LSO/LYSO for applications in PGI. Hence, experiments at the ELBE accelerator at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf (Germany) were performed using digital silicon photomultiplier (dSiPM) from Philips with monolithic BGO and LYSO crystals and for completeness with GAGG and CeBr3. The time resolution of BGO compared to the faster scintillators will be presented for a wide range of trigger- and validation levels as well as validation lengths of the dSiPM. Timing resolutions below 300 ps were obtained for BGO, while LYSO and CeBr3 achieve about 170 ps.

Keywords: fast timing; digital silicon photomultiplier; particle therapy; range verification

Related publications

  • Lecture (Conference)
    2014 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (2014 NSS/MIC), 08.-15.11.2014, Seattle, USA
  • Contribution to proceedings
    2014 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (2014 NSS/MIC), 08.-15.11.2014, Seattle, USA
    Proceedings of 2014 NSS/MIC

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