Development of microcolumnar LaBr 3 :Ce scintillator

Abstract

While a wide variety of new scintillators are now available, new cerium-doped lanthanide halide scintillators have shown a strong potential to move beyond their familiar role in conventional gamma ray spectroscopy, toward fulfilling the needs of highly demanding applications such as radioisotope identification at room temperature, homeland security, and quantitative molecular imaging for medical diagnostics, staging and research. Despite their extraordinary advantages, however, issues related to reliable, large volume manufacturing of these high light yield materials in a rapid and economic manner have not been resolved or purposefully addressed. Also, if microcolumnar films of this material could be fabricated, it would find widespread use in a multitude of high-speed imaging/nuclear medicine applications. Here we report on synthesizing LaBr3:Ce scintillators using a thermal evaporation technique, which permits the fabrication of high spatial resolution microcolumnar films and holds a potential to synthesize large volumes of high quality material in a time efficient and cost effective manner. Performance evaluation of the fabricated films and their application for SPECT imaging are also discussed.