Optical crosstalk in CT detectors and its effects on CT images

Hanbean Youn; Soohwa Kam; Jong Chul Han; Ho Kyung Kim

doi:10.1117/12.2043874

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19 March 2014 Optical crosstalk in CT detectors and its effects on CT images

Hanbean Youn, Soohwa Kam, Jong Chul Han, Ho Kyung Kim

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Proceedings Volume 9033, Medical Imaging 2014: Physics of Medical Imaging; 90334V (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2043874
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2014, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Detectors for computed tomography (CT) typically consist of scintillator and photodiode arrays which are coupled using optical glue. Therefore, the leakage of optical photons generated in a scintillator block to neighboring pixel photodiodes through the optical glue layer is inevitable. Passivation layers to protect the silicon photodiode as well as the silicon layer itself, which is inactive to the optical photons, are another causes for the leakage. This optical crosstalk reduces image sharpness, and eventually will blur CT images. We have quantitatively investigated the optical crosstalk in CT detectors using the Monte Carlo technique. We performed the optical Monte Carlo simulations for various thicknesses of optical components in a 129 × 129 CT detector array. We obtained the coordinates of optical photons hitting the user-defined detection plane. From the coordinate information, we calculated the collection efficiency at the detection plane and the collection efficiency at the single pixel located just below the scintillator in which the optical photons were generated. Difference between the two quantities provided the optical crosstalk. In addition, using the coordinate information, we calculated point-spread functions as well as modulation-transfer functions from which we estimated the effective aperture due to the optical photon spreading. The optical crosstalk was most severely affected by the thickness of photodiode passivation layer. The effective aperture due to the optical crosstalk was about 110% of the detector pixel aperture for a 0.1 mm-thick passivation layer, and this signal blur was appeared as a relative error of about 3-4% in mismatches between CT images with and without the optical crosstalk. The detailed simulation results are shown and will be very useful for the design of CT detectors.

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Hanbean Youn, Soohwa Kam, Jong Chul Han, and Ho Kyung Kim "Optical crosstalk in CT detectors and its effects on CT images", Proc. SPIE 9033, Medical Imaging 2014: Physics of Medical Imaging, 90334V (19 March 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2043874

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