Effect of electronic noise and lowest energy threshold selection in photon counting detectors

Paurakh L. Rajbhandary; Norbert J. Pelc

doi:10.1117/12.2293929

12 March 2018 Effect of electronic noise and lowest energy threshold selection in photon counting detectors

Proceedings Volume 10573, Medical Imaging 2018: Physics of Medical Imaging; 105734S (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2293929
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2018, Houston, Texas, United States

Abstract

Photon counting detectors (PCD) are widely credited with having minimum degradation from electronic noise compared to energy integrating detectors. However, they are not immune. We characterized the effect of electronic noise in simulated CdTe PCDs (0.25-1mm pixels) for spectral and effective monoenergetic tasks. Electronic noise was modeled as two separable effects - spectral blurring modeled as convolution with a Gaussian kernel with standard deviation of 7 keV, and false triggering of the lowest energy bin (depending on the threshold). To model false triggering, noise was created by filtering white Gaussian noise with a Gaussian pulse shaping kernel of 40 ns peaking time and, scaled to have a standard deviation of 7 keV, and analyzed numerically to obtain the mean and variance of false triggers at thresholds from 3 to 45 keV with ±3.5 keV hysteresis. PCDs had 5 energy bins, were operated at maximum of 20 % of characteristic count rate unless otherwise specified, and pulse pileup was not modeled. We assume the expected number of false triggers can be predicted and subtracted but that the noise from those events remains. Quantum and false triggering noise were propagated into basis material images using the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound. In basis material images, at the optimal threshold (balancing false triggers and lost true events) there was an 18-24% variance penalty compared to a detector with no electronic noise. For effective monoenergetic imaging, capturing low energy pulses performs asymptotically as well as a detector without electronic noise, with the penalty increasing with increasing energy threshold.

Citation Download Citation

Paurakh L. Rajbhandary and Norbert J. Pelc "Effect of electronic noise and lowest energy threshold selection in photon counting detectors", Proc. SPIE 10573, Medical Imaging 2018: Physics of Medical Imaging, 105734S (12 March 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2293929

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available