Multiple Modality gamma-Ray Imager Using LaCl3(Ce) Scintillators With Active Collimation Method

Abstract

Multiple modality gamma-ray imaging using mechanical and electronic collimation with different detection methods was proposed and tested by simulation. Although conventional mechanical collimators, which are made from high atomic number and density materials, passively filter the incident radiation, the mechanical collimator reported in this study consisted of LaCl3(Ce) scintillators, which actively collimate the radiation and are used as the 1st detector of an electronic collimator to reconstruct a Compton image. A detector box made from six planar LaCl3(Ce) scintillators was positioned behind the active collimator. The LaCl3(Ce) scintillator arrays used as the active collimator and box detector consisted of voxels, each 2 mm x 2 mm x 5 mm(3) in size. A combination of active collimators and box detectors can produce multiple modalities for both mechanical and electronic collimation. The information from each modality was combined effectively using the maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) method. Therefore, a reconstructed image from multiple modalities has inherently higher efficiency than each conventional modality. The reconstructed images were evaluated using the resolution-variance curve as a quantitative method. Although mechanical collimation is effective at low gamma-ray energy and electronic collimation shows high performance at high gamma-ray energy, multiple modalities are superior to the conventional single modalities for intermediate gamma-ray energies (364 keV). The angular resolution and absolute efficiency were calculated for each modality and source energy.