Development of industrial single photon emission computed tomography (ISPECT)

Abstract

Industrial single photon emission tomography system utilized the gamma-ray emission of radioactive tracer to images the cross-section of tracer distribution for industrial process monitoring and diagnosis. In this paper, 36 units of Sodium Iodide, NaI scintillation detectors were used to study flow in a pipelines. The detectors were arranged in two geometrical arrangement, a hexagon and nonagon configuration. The detectors are connected to three 12-channel gamma counter which is controlled by data acquisition and image reconstruction software developed for the system. The images from these two set-ups were also compared with single detector time-average system. Depending on the size of the pipeline used, i.e. for 36 detectors, the nonagon arrangement gives more information on the distribution of the tracer. Thus nonagon set-up is more suitable to be used for representing or demonstrating the image of the tracer distribution in the pipeline.