Spatio-energetic cross-talk in photon counting detectors: N×N binning and sub-pixel masking

Katsuyuki Taguchi, Karl Stierstorfer, Christoph Polster, Okkyun Lee, Steffen Kappler

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Smaller pixels sizes of x-ray photon counting detectors (PCDs) have the two conflicting effects as follows. On one hand, smaller pixel sizes improve the ability to handle high count rates of x-rays (i.e., pulse pileups) because incident rates onto each PCD pixel decreases with decreasing the size. On the other hand, smaller pixel sizes increase chances of crosstalk and double-counting (or n-tuple-counting in general) between neighboring pixels, because, while the same size of electron charge cloud generated by a photon is independent of PCD sizes, the charge cloud size relative to the PCD size increases with decreasing the PCD size. In addition, the following two aspects are practical configurations in actual PCD computed tomography systems: N×N-pixel binning and anti-scatter grids. When n-tuple-counting occurs and those data are binned/added during post-acquisition process, the variance of the data will be larger than its mean. The anti-scatter grids may eliminate or decrease the cross-talk and n-tuple-counting by blocking primary x-rays near pixel boundaries or for the width of one pixel entirely. In this study, we studied the effects of PCD pixel sizes, N×N-pixel binning, and pixel masking on soft tissue contrast visibility using newly developed Photon Counting Toolkit (PcTK version 3.2; https://pctk.jhu.edu).

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationMedical Imaging 2018
Subtitle of host publicationPhysics of Medical Imaging
EditorsTaly Gilat Schmidt, Guang-Hong Chen, Joseph Y. Lo
PublisherSPIE
ISBN (Electronic)9781510616356
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018
EventMedical Imaging 2018: Physics of Medical Imaging - Houston, United States
Duration: Feb 12 2018Feb 15 2018

Publication series

NameProgress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE
Volume10573
ISSN (Print)1605-7422

Other

OtherMedical Imaging 2018: Physics of Medical Imaging
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityHouston
Period2/12/182/15/18

Keywords

  • Computed tomography
  • photon counting
  • spectral distortion
  • spectral response

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
  • Biomaterials
  • Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging

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