Encoding methods matching the 16 × 16 pixel CZT detector of a coded aperture gamma camera

• Published in: Nuclear science and techniques 2020-09, Vol.31 (9), p.82-89, Article 92
• Main Authors: Shen, Xiao-Lei, Gong, Pin, Tang, Xiao-Bin, Zhang, Rui, Ma, Jin-Chao
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Energy; Hadrons; Heavy Ions; Nuclear Energy; Nuclear Physics
• ISSN: 1001-8042; 2210-3147
• DOI: 10.1007/s41365-020-00796-5

With the advancements in nuclear energy, methods that can accurately obtain the spatial information of radioactive sources have become essential for nuclear energy safety. Coded aperture imaging technology is widely used because it provides two-dimensional distribution information of radioactive sources. The coded array is a major component of a coded aperture gamma camera, and it affects the key performance parameters of the camera. Currently, commonly used coded arrays such as uniformly redundant arrays (URAs) and modified uniformly redundant arrays (MURAs) have prime numbers of rows or columns and may lead to wastage of detector pixels. A 16 × 16 coded array was designed on the basis of an existing 16 × 16 multi-pixel position-sensitive cadmium zinc telluride detector. The digital signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio of the point spread function at the center of the array is 25.67. Furthermore, Monte Carlo camera models and experimental devices based on rank-13 MURA and rank-16 URA have been constructed. With the same angular resolution, the field size of view under rank-16 URA is 1.53 times that of under rank-13 MURA. Simulations (Am-241, Co-57, Ir-192, Cs-137) and experiments (Co-57) are conducted to compare the imaging performance between rank-16 URA and rank-13 MURA. The contrast-to-noise ratio of the reconstructed image of the rank-16 array is great and only slightly lower than that of rank-13 MURA. However, as the photon energy increases, the gap becomes almost negligible.