Investigation of Dark-Count-Less Lu2(SiO4)O-Multipixel-Photon Detector and Its Application to Photon Counting X-ray Computed Tomography Using Iodine Media

X-ray photons are detected using a Lu2(SiO4)O [LSO] single-crystal scintillator with a decay time of 40 ns and a multipixel photon counter (MPPC). The photocurrent from the MPPC is amplified by a high-speed current–voltage amplifier with an 80 MHz-gain-band operational amplifier, and the 200-ns-width event pulses are sent to a multichannel analyzer (MCA) to measure X-ray spectra. The MPPC was driven in the pre-Geiger mode at a bias voltage of 70.7 V and a temperature of 23 °C. Photon-counting computed tomography (PC-CT) is accomplished by repeated linear scans and rotations of an object, and projection curves of the object are obtained by linear scanning at a tube current of 1.5 mA. In PC-CT, the event pulse height is dispersed using a 7-ns-delay comparator. The exposure time for obtaining a tomogram is 10 min with scan steps of 0.5 mm and rotation steps of 1.0°. At a tube voltage of 80 kV, the maximum count rate is 250 kcps. We carry out PC-CT using iodine media and confirm the energy-dispersive effect with changes in the lower level voltage of event pulses using a comparator.