Speaker
Description
Radiation imaging and detection is an outstanding topic in various areas from astroparticle physics, over medical imaging to radiation security. On of suitable detectors which has been researched lately is the Compton camera offering potential advantages such as a wide field of view, the ability to reconstruct 3D images, and with a portable lightweight design due to absence of heavy collimation. We designed and constructed a novel, compact Compton gamma camera whose detector element consists of two scintillator crystals optically coupled by a light guide between them. We used GAGG:Ce scintillators of 3 x 3 x 3 mm3 and 3 x 3 x 20 mm3 plexiglass lightguides. Detector elements were placed in an 8 x 8 matrix with a 3.2 mm pitch, separated by ESR reflector. In this configuration the front scintillator layer is acting as the scatterer and the back scintillator layer is acting as the absorber of the Compton scattered gamma radiation, while both are read out by the same silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) array coupled to the back side of the matrix, thus forming a compact single-plane detector. We will report the results of the performed laboratory characterization of the detector.
