Silicon Photomultipliers in Scintillation Detectors for Nuclear Medicine

Abstract

In the first part of this chapter different characteristics of silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), which affect the use of SiPMs in medical instrumentation, are reviewed. It covers a gain of SiPM, excess noise factor (ENF), photon detection efficiency (PDE), after-pulses, crosstalk, dark noise, and a linearity of the response. In the second part, a summary of timing studies with SiPMs in scintillation detection is presented. It covers results of tests of transit time spread at single photon detection and the best reported time resolution in a fast timing with 511 keV annihilation quanta, on the way to time-of-flight positron emission tomography (PET) scanners. Next, various tests reported for a combination of SiPM arrays of different size coupled to different scintillators used in gamma spectrometry, like NaI(Tl), BGO, LaBr3, and LYSO are reviewed, including tests of 3″ × 3″ LaBr3:Ce and its co-doped version. Besides of the characterization of different SiPMs in scintillation detection some examples of the most modern medical instrumentation are presented including the newest Siemens Biograph Vision PET/CT scanner and the uExplorer whole body PET scanner.