Simulation study of Resistive Plate Chamber's (RPCs) capability for medical imaging applications

Abstract

Resistive Plate Chambers (RPC) have attracted a lot of research attention since past two decades due to their special features and properties especially for high energy physics applications. In this paper its capability to be used for medical imaging applications is studied. The main focus of this paper is on the gamma detection efficiency and energy resolution of this detector for common medical imaging modalities. The gamma to electron converter material and its thickness for a multilayer converter configuration is optimized to improve the detection efficiency. Simulation results show that 200 μm thickness of Borosilicate glass resistive plate can suppress the scattered photons. Therefor it can distinguish the primary and scattered photons for PET imaging with good detection efficiency for the primaries. By using 50 layers of RPCs with 30–50 μm thickness of lead converters and 200 μm thickness of borosilicate glasses as resistive plates of RPCs, not only for 511 keV gamma, the detection efficiency of 15% can be achieved, but also the related signals of scatterd gammas at 425 keV and 325 keV energies in comparison to 511 keV are reduced 30% and 65%, respectively. The 2 μm and 10 μm thicknesses of Lead are also introduced as high detection efficiency converter material for CT and SPECT scans, respectively.