EAGER: Highly directional beam emission control of scintillator detectors for biomedical and security imaging applicatio

提案标题：EIGER：生物医学和安全成像应用中闪烁体探测器的高定向光束发射控制项目目标：该项目将利用闪烁体设备的基本光子特性来确定低剂量、高分辨率成像应用的可行性。非技术摘要：医学成像已成为诊断和治疗人类疾病的最依赖的医疗保健工具之一。为了开发新的成像技术，用于威胁生命的疾病和癌症的早期检测、筛查、诊断和图像引导治疗，显然需要将成像扩展到更高的分辨率水平，精细分辨率水平的信息可以导致检测疾病或癌症形成的早期阶段或干预或治疗过程中的早期分子变化。辐射检测也被广泛应用于机场和国家安全。这项拟议的研究将利用闪烁体器件的基本光子特性来确定下一代闪烁体探测器用于低剂量、高分辨率成像应用的最终目标的可行性。本研究的目的是研究和理解一类新型的应用于闪烁体探测器的仿生纳米光子结构。最终，拟议的EIGER项目的结果将使我们能够进一步探索在细胞和分子生物学水平上实现生物医学成像的可能性，并为国家和机场安全提供高质量的成像质量。技术摘要：无机闪烁体探测器是现代医学成像模式中的关键部件，用作X射线和射线的转换器，用于获取身体内部的信息，如X射线、CT和PET扫描，以及用于国家和机场安全。发展下一代基于辐射的成像系统的一个关键问题是探测器的能量和时间分辨率。它们受到闪烁体光输出的统计波动的影响，即受粒子将其能量存储在闪烁体中时检测到的光子数量的影响。闪烁体的光输出不仅取决于所产生的光子的绝对数量，而且还取决于光子器件的几何形状、其在闪烁波长的传输特性以及其折射率。特别是在长宽比较小的微小探测器晶体中，在光电探测器中转化为电子信号之前，相当一部分光子会丢失。这种效应增加了光输出的统计起伏，因此降低了成像质量的分辨率。大多数高密度闪烁体的折射率都很高，因此大部分光被俘获在晶体中，只有10%-15%的光可以进入光探测器，大部分光不能被有效地提取，这严重影响了闪烁体探测器的效率和探测灵敏度。这项拟议的急切研究的目标是研究一种新型的生物启发的纳米级光子结构，这种结构具有高效的闪烁体器件光提取功能。我们建议研究各种类型的闪烁体材料和器件的特性，如CaCu3+单晶、掺杂Tb3+玻璃和Lu2SiO5：Ce薄膜，并根据它们的光学性质设计出光结构，从而显著提高这些闪烁体器件的整体效率。此外，我们将利用纳米级光子结构的独特性质来设计输出光束的形状，以便我们可以控制光的角度行为，这将使更小的像素，更高的成像分辨率成为可能。

Proposal Title: EAGER: Highly directional beam emission control of scintillator detectors for biomedical and security imaging applications Project Goals:The project will exploit the basic scintillator device's photonic properties to determine the feasibility for lower dose, higher resolution imaging applications.Nontechnical Abstract:Medical imaging has become one of the most relied-upon tools in health-care for diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. In order to develop novel imaging techniques for early detection, screening, diagnosis, and image-guided treatment of life-threatening diseases and cancer, there is a clear need for extending imaging to much higher resolution level, information at fine resolution levels can lead to the detection of the early stages of the formation of a disease or cancer or early molecular changes during intervention or therapy. Radiation detection has also been widely used for airport and national security. The proposed research will exploit the basic scintillator device's photonic properties to determine the feasibility of ultimate goal for next generation scintillator detectors for lower dose, higher resolution imaging applications. The objective of the proposed research is to study and understand a new class of bio-inspired nano photonic structures applied on scintillator detectors. Ultimately, the results from the proposed EAGER project will enable us to further explore the possibility to achieve biomedical imaging at the cellular and molecular biology level and high imaging quality for national and airport security.Technical Abstract:Inorganic scintillator detector are key components used in modern medical imaging modalities as converter for the x-rays and ã-radiation that are used to obtain information about the interior of the body, like x-ray, CT and PET scan, as well as for national and airport security. One key problem in the development of the next generation radiation based imaging systems is the energy and time resolution of the detectors. They are influenced by the statistical fluctuations of the light output of the scintillators, i.e. by the number of photons that are detected when a particle deposits its energy in the scintillator. The light output of the scintillator depends not only on the absolute number of generated photons but also on the geometrical shape of the photonic devices, its transmission properties at the wavelength of scintillation, and its refractive index. Especially in tiny detector crystals with small aspect ratio, a significant fraction of photons is lost before conversion into an electronic signal in the photo detector. This effect increases the statistical fluctuations of the light output and therefore, deteriorates the resolution of imaging quality. Most of the high-density scintillators have a high refractive index, so most of light is trapped in the crystal, only 10-15% of the light from the scintillator devices can enter into the photo detector, the majority of light couldn't be effectively extracted, which seriously affected the scintillator detector's efficiency and detection sensitivity. The goal of the proposed EAGER research is to investigate a novel class of bio inspired nano scale photonic structures that function with efficient light extraction for scintillator devices. We propose to study the characteristics of various types of scintillator materials and devices, such as ã-CuI single crystal, doped Tb3+ glass and Lu2SiO5:Ce thin film, and design light extraction structures based on their optical properties, so that the overall efficiency of these scintillator devices will be increased significantly. Furthermore, we will utilize the unique properties of the nano scale photonic structures to engineer the output light beam shape so that we can control the angular behavior of the light, which will make smaller pixel, higher imaging resolution possible.