Application of Gd₂O₂S Ceramic Scintillator for X-Ray Solid State Detector in X-Ray CT

Abstract

The quality of CT images depends on the characteristics of the X-ray detector. In place of conventional xenon ionization detectors, we have designed a highly efficient solid state detector with low detector noise by using a Gd2O2S ceramic scintillator.

Highly transparent ZrO2-doped (Ce,Gd)3Al3Ga2O12 ceramics prepared via oxygen sintering

“…In the past few decades, ceramic scintillators have been well developed for ionizing radiation detection, especially in the X-ray detection and nuclear medical diagnostics [1]. Up to now, three ceramic scintillators have been used in the commercial medical computed tomography (CT) systems [2], among which, Eu:(Y,Gd) 2 O 3 (usually known as HiLight) [3] and Ce:(Lu,Tb) 3 Al 5 O 12 (usually known as Gemstone) [2,4,5] were developed by GE Healthcare; Pr:Gd 2 O 2 Sbased ceramic (GOS) was first developed by researchers of Hitachi Company [6][7][8]. Other CT manufacturers including Siemens [9,10] and Toshiba [11] adopted GOS as its functional material and developed their own proprietary processing technologies.…”

Hole traps in Lu2O3:Eu ceramic scintillators. I. Persistent afterglow

“…Unfortunately this material, not being cubic, cannot be formed into fully transparent ceramics. With low porosity, however, it can be made somewhat more translucent than the corresponding powders and has found wide application in CT [2][3][4]. If, however, the material does have a cubic crystal structure, it is actually possible to achieve complete transparency, a fact first demonstrated by scientists at General Electric Laboratories [5,6].…”

Scintillator-Based Detectors

“…Of particular interest are Gd 2 O 2 S:Pr,Ce,F, Gd 2 O 2 S:Pr, and Y 1.34 ,Gd 0.60 O 3 :(Eu, Pr) 0.06 , developed by Hitachi Metals (Ito et al, 1988;Yoshida et al, 1988), Siemens (Flynn et al, 2010;Hupke and Doubrava, 1999;Rossner et al, 1999) (brand name UFC, Ultra Fast Ceramics), and General Electric (Duclos et al, 2003;Greskovich et al, 1992) (brand name HiLight). Of particular interest are Gd 2 O 2 S:Pr,Ce,F, Gd 2 O 2 S:Pr, and Y 1.34 ,Gd 0.60 O 3 :(Eu, Pr) 0.06 , developed by Hitachi Metals (Ito et al, 1988;Yoshida et al, 1988), Siemens (Flynn et al, 2010;Hupke and Doubrava, 1999;Rossner et al, 1999) (brand name UFC, Ultra Fast Ceramics), and General Electric (Duclos et al, 2003;Greskovich et al, 1992) (brand name HiLight).…”