Advances in Gamma-Ray Imaging with Intensified Quantum-Imaging Detectors Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Han, Ling Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 10/10/2021 07:17:02 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/626672 ADVANCES IN GAMMA-RAY IMAGING WITH INTENSIFIED QUANTUM-IMAGING DETECTORS by Ling Han __________________________ Copyright © Ling Han 2017 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the COLLEGE OF OPTICAL SCIENCES In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2017 2 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Ling Han 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I am indebted to my parents, Baoquan Han and Xiujie Xu, for their selfless efforts supporting my over twenty years’ domestic and overseas education. I am grateful to them for their encouragements to pursue a PhD degree. I owe special thanks to my wife, Yajuan, and am grateful for her patience, accompany, help, and encouragement during my PhD study. I am indebted to my advisor, Lars Furenlid, for his continual support and guidance during the course of this research. Many achievements in this research would not be possible without his brilliant ideas and advices. He is not only a respectable professor with a lot of experience and knowledge, but also a great person to be around with. I am also grateful to Harrison Barrett for his guidance and encouragement in learning about mathematical foundations of my work. I would like to thank Brad Barber for his help with many experiments, for tutoring me fundamental knowledge when I first joined the group, and for serving in my dissertation committee. I am indebted to Christy Barber for her help with so many small animal experiments. I would like to thank Zhonglin Liu and James Woolfenden for their help with interpreting animal images. I am also indebted to Luca Caucci for offering help with image reconstruction that is an important aspect of this work. I would like to thank Brian Miller for his assistance with troubleshooting software problems of FastSPECT III system. I also would like to thank Matthew Kupinski and Art Gmitro for serving in my dissertation committee and proving valuable feedbacks and guidance to this dissertation. I would like to thank all of my colleagues at the Center for Gamma-Ray Imaging, Vaibhav Bora, Helen Fan, Esen Salcin, Joseph Ortiz, Cecile Chaix, Ryeojin Park, Yijun Ding, Xin Li, Maria Ruiz, Alex Lin, Neil Momsen, and Pier Ingram for sharing their ideas and being a tremendous support group, who are not only great co-workers, but are also great friends in life. Finally I would like to thank Merry Warner and Liz Hague for helping me purchase all kinds of lab supplies and equipment. This work was supported by NIH/NIBIB grant P41-EB002035 “The Center for Gamma- Ray Imaging”, and Department of Medical Imaging “TIPPS” grant, lymphoscintigraphy. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................. 9 LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. 12 ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 1 ....................................................................................................................... 14 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 14 1.1 Radioactivity ............................................................................................................. 14 1.2 X-Rays vs Gamma-Rays ........................................................................................... 17 1.3 Radiotracer Technique .............................................................................................. 19 1.3.1 Common Radioisotopes and Ligands ................................................................. 21 1.4 Nuclear-Medicine Imaging ....................................................................................... 22 1.4.1 Gamma Camera .................................................................................................. 23 1.4.2 Scintigraphy ....................................................................................................... 25 1.4.3 SPECT ................................................................................................................ 26 1.4.4 PET ..................................................................................................................... 28 1.5 Performance Metrics ................................................................................................. 30 1.6 Preclinical vs. Clinical Imaging ................................................................................ 33 1.7 Brief Survey of Gamma Detectors and SPECT Systems .......................................... 34 1.8 This Work ................................................................................................................. 37 CHAPTER 2 ....................................................................................................................... 39 DETECTORS ..................................................................................................................... 39 2.1 Gamma Image Formation ......................................................................................... 40 2.1.1 Pinhole Aperture ................................................................................................ 41 2.1.2 Parallel-Hole Collimator .................................................................................... 43 2.2 Interaction of Gamma Rays with Matter .................................................................. 45 2.2.1 Photoelectric Absorption .................................................................................... 46 2.2.2 Compton Scattering ............................................................................................ 47 2.3 Scintillation Detector ................................................................................................ 48 2.3.1 Physics of Scintillation Process .......................................................................... 48 6 2.3.2 Micro-Columnar Scintillator .............................................................................. 52 2.4 Scintillation Readout ................................................................................................. 54 2.4.1 Image Intensifier ................................................................................................ 55 2.4.2 CCD and CMOS Sensors ................................................................................... 59 2.5 The iQID Scintillation Camera ................................................................................. 64 2.5.1 Camera Configurations ...................................................................................... 65 2.5.2 Sources of Noise ................................................................................................. 67 2.5.3 Event Estimation ................................................................................................ 69 CHAPTER 3 ....................................................................................................................... 72 ENERGY RESOLUTION OF IQID .................................................................................. 72 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 72 3.2 Physics of the Micro-Channel Plate .......................................................................... 74 3.2.1 Secondary Electron Yield ................................................................................... 75 3.2.2 Secondary Electron Emission Energy ................................................................ 78 3.2.3 Secondary Electron Emission Angle .................................................................. 78 3.2.4 Electron Reflection ............................................................................................. 79 3.2.5 Other Physical Effects ........................................................................................ 79 3.3 Monte Carlo Simulation ............................................................................................ 80 3.4 Results and Analysis ................................................................................................. 82 3.4.1 MCP Basic Properties Study .............................................................................