Scintillation detector array for encoding the energy, position, and time coordinates of gamma ray interactions
US6362479B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 18, 1999 |
| Grant date | Mar 26, 2002 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Mar 18, 2019 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC A)Human Necessities
- CPC primaryA61B6/037
- WIPO fieldEnvironmental technology
- WIPO sectorChemistry
Abstract
A scintillation detector which includes a plurality of discrete scintillators composed of one or more scintillator materials. The discrete scintillators interact with incident radiation to produce a quantifiable number of photons with characteristic emission wavelength and decay time. A light guide is operatively associated with the scintillation crystals and may be either active or non-active and segmented or non-segmented depending upon the embodiment of the design. Photodetectors are provided to sense and quantify the scintillation light emissions. The process and system embodying various features of the present invention can be utilized in various applications such as SPECT, PET imaging and simultaneous PET systems. In accordance with the present invention, the detector array of the present invention incorporates either a single scintillator layer of discrete scintillators or discrete scintillators composed of two stacked different layers that can be the same scintillator material or of two different scintillator materials. In either case the different layers are composed of materials that have distinctly different decay times. The variants in these figures are the types of opt…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.