No abstract

We are developing a prototype gamma-ray imaging system that consists of two sets of movable, keel-edged copper-tungsten blades configured as crossed slits. These apertures can be positioned independently between the object and detector, producing an anamorphic image in which the axial and transaxial magnifications are not constrained to be equal. The detector is a 60 mm × 60 mm, millimeter thick, one-megapixel silicon double-sided strip detector. The flexible nature of this system allows the application of adaptive imaging techniques. We will discuss system details, calibration and acquisition methods, and our progress towards biological imaging applications.

This work presents characterization studies of thick silicon double-sided strip detectors for a high-resolution small-animal SPECT. The dimension of these detectors is 60.4 mm × 60.4 mm × 1 mm. There are 1024 strips on each side that give the coordinates of the photon interaction, with each strip processed by a separate ASIC channel. Our measurement shows that intrinsic spatial resolution equivalent to the 59 μm strip pitch is attainable. Good trigger uniformity can be achieved by proper setting of a 4-bit DAC in each ASIC channel to remove trigger threshold variations. This is particularly important for triggering at low energies. The thick silicon DSSD (Double-sided strip detector) shows high potential for small-animal SPECT.

We measured the polarization dependence of light scattered from a tilted fiber grating and found disagreement with previous volume-current perturbation analysis. However, by including the longitudinal E field of the guided wave we were able to obtain good agreement, demonstrating that, although it is small, this component cannot be neglected when scattering of weakly guided waves is considered. A first-order approximation formula for the polarization dependence was also obtained and is shown to be accurate within most of the resonance band of scattering.