New developments in full-field radiography detectors: Direct conversion selenium detector with avalanche gain layer

Denny L.Y. Lee; George Storti; Kelly P. Golden

doi:10.1117/12.565869

26 October 2004 New developments in full-field radiography detectors: Direct conversion selenium detector with avalanche gain layer

Denny L.Y. Lee, George Storti, Kelly P. Golden

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 5541, Penetrating Radiation Systems and Applications VI; (2004) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.565869
Event: Optical Science and Technology, the SPIE 49th Annual Meeting, 2004, Denver, Colorado, United States

Abstract

Amorphous selenium direct-conversion x-ray detectors have been used successfully for full field digital mammography (FFDM) and digital radiography (DR). Such detectors characteristically exhibit high spatial resolution and conversion efficiency that is a function of the applied electric field. About 50 electron volts of photon energy are required to generate each electron-hole pair in a typical amorphous selenium x-ray conversion layer biased at 10 volts per micron. At FFDM and DR imaging x-ray energies each absorbed photon can generate only about 250 to 1000 electron-hole pairs. Medical imaging applications must therefore employ low noise thin film transistor (TFT) arrays and charge integration amplifiers to achieve high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and detective quantum efficiency (DQE). To assure quantum-noise limited imaging results with the lowest practical x-ray exposure dose, it is desirable to include an additional low-noise gain stage in the x-ray conversion layer. We have proposed and studied a new structure for an amorphous selenium detector that employs an internal biased gain grid to cause avalanche-gain within the x-ray conversion layer. An amplification of at least 10X can be achieved without introducing excessive noise. Quantum-limited image detection should then be attainable for even very low exposures.

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Denny L.Y. Lee, George Storti, and Kelly P. Golden "New developments in full-field radiography detectors: Direct conversion selenium detector with avalanche gain layer", Proc. SPIE 5541, Penetrating Radiation Systems and Applications VI, (26 October 2004); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.565869

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