The lower bound on the timing resolution of scintillation detectors

Seifert, Stefan; Dam, Herman T. van; Schaart, Dennis R.

doi:10.1088/0031-9155/57/7/1797

Cited by 153 publications

(164 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…It is based on consideration of a signal as a sequence of point events (photons, electrons) of negligible time duration represented by Dirac delta functions convolved with instrumental response function (SER) of a detector of random amplitudes (marks) and fixed temporal profile h ser (t). Recently this approach has been applied to SiPM time resolution models with more or less pronounced focus on specifics of the SiPM operations [25], [26], [27]. Point process event is specified by probability of the event in a given time t, and probability to initiate instrumental response (to detect photon, to trigger an avalanche) ρ det (t) is defined by convolution of corresponding probability density functions (PDF) of photon arrival ρ ph (t), primary triggering ρ sptr (t) (equal to PDF of single photon time resolution histogram), and correlated triggering ρ corr (t) due to crosstalk and afterpulsing: …”

Section: Filtered Marked Point Process Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perfomance of Silicon Photomultipliers in photon number and time resolution

Vinogradov¹

2016

Proceedings of International Conference on New Photo-Detectors — PoS(PhotoDet2015)

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Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) are a novel generation of photon detectors designed as an array of independently operated Geiger-mode APDs (pixels) with common output. SiPM provides proportional detection of low-level light pulses starting from single photons with remarkable photon number and time resolution at room temperature. Now they are worldwide recognized to be competitive with vacuum photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) and avalanche photodiodes (APDs) for scintillation and Cherenkov light detections in such areas as particle physics and nuclear medicine. Well-known specific drawbacks of SiPMs are excess noises caused by stochastic processes of crosstalk and afterpulsing as well as non-linearity and saturation of SiPM response to intense light pulses due to limited number of pixels and noninstant pixel recovery.This study presents an analysis of SiPM performance based on probability distributions of the key stochastic processes affecting SiPM response: photo-conversion, dark generation, avalanche multiplication, crosstalk and afterpulsing, non-linearity and saturation losses. SiPM performance in photon number (energy) resolution is represented in terms of specific excess noise factors of these processes identified as comparable metrics of their contributions. SiPM time resolution is shown to be defined by photon number resolution and by temporal profiles of photon arrival and photon detection time distributions, and a single electron response.Analytical results of this approach are applied to compare a performance of the modern SiPMs with each other and with conventional PMTs and APDs in typical scintillation and Cherenkov detection applications. The results also seem to be useful for SiPM characterization, selection, and application-specific optimization as well as for SiPM design improvements.

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Section: Filtered Marked Point Process Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perfomance of Silicon Photomultipliers in photon number and time resolution

Vinogradov¹

2016

Proceedings of International Conference on New Photo-Detectors — PoS(PhotoDet2015)

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“…Dataset I is characterized by 100 ps FWHM jitter and 300 photoelectrons; dataset II by 700 ps FWHM jitter and 3800 photoelectrons. The scintillation decay constants were the same for both cases (LSO with properties [1]). We also calculated the CRLB (intrinsic limit) for each data set [2], [1].…”

Section: Cramér Rao Lower Boundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The simulated LSO and its properties were according to [1]. The total jitter of the system was 180 ps.…”

Section: Skipping Effect and Likelihood Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Practical time mark estimators for multichannel digital silicon photomultipliers

Venialgo

Mandai

Gong

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (NSS/MIC)

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Abstract-Multiple time-to-digital converters coupled with silicon photomultipliers allow to timestamp several light photons generated by a scintillation event. Multichannel digital silicon photomultipliers opened the possibility to estimate a gammaphoton time mark by using several photoelectrons timestamps.We studied the already-existing statistics models of photoeletron time-stamping generation, while extending the current models by adding the skipping effect. Which accounts for the inability of the system to timestamp a continuous set of photoelectrons.In addition, we proposed two multiple photoelectron timemark estimators based on the best linear unbiased and the maximum likelihood estimation methods. We calculated the Cramér Rao lower bound for several system parameter and compared it to the proposed estimators' performance. We concluded that under certain system configurations the proposed estimators are efficient.Moreover, we investigated the effect of the dark count rate on the timing performance. Also, we introduced a filtering method that is based on measuring the time distance between adjacent timestamps. We performed a full Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the proposed filter efficiency.Finally, we performed a full Monte Carlo simulation to compare the timemark estimators' performance. We concluded that the best linear unbiased estimator is as efficient as the maximum likelihood estimator. In addition, it was verified that the multichannel digital silicon photomultipliers have a stronger tolerance to dark counts in comparison current digital silicon photomultiplier architectures. I. CRAMÉR RAO LOWER BOUNDThe Cramér Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) determines a maximum estimation performance for problems that satisfy certain regularity conditions. The CRLB for the particular case of gamma-photon timemmark estimation was analyzed byIn single-photoelectron (q th ) timestamp estimation there is only one possible unbiased estimator, which is given bŷwhere t q represents the time-of-registration of the q th photoelectron and A is expressed asThe root mean square error (root-MSE) of the singlephotoelectron estimation method is equal to the square root of the variance of the PDF (probability density function) of the time-of-registration of the q th photoelectron [2].The maximum timing performance in the singlephotoelectron estimation case is determined by Eq. (3). We calculated the performance as a function of the photoelectron order for two different system parameter configurations (see Figs. 1 and 2) called datasets I and II. Dataset I is characterized by 100 ps FWHM jitter and 300 photoelectrons; dataset II by 700 ps FWHM jitter and 3800 photoelectrons. The scintillation decay constants were the same for both cases (LSO with properties [1]). We also calculated the CRLB (intrinsic limit) for each data set [2], [1]. II. MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATIONThe likelihood function that corresponds to the t 1:Q timestamps of the first Q photoelectrons, when estimating the location parameter (T 0 ) is defined bywhere R repres...

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“…In a MD-SiPM, every sensitive cell measures the time-of-arrival (TOA) of detected photons independently. This capability ensures one to approach the Crámer-Rao lowerbound on timing resolution [14], [16], [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy estimation technique utilizing timing information for TOF-PET application

Mandai

Venialgo

Charbon

2013

2013 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (2013 NSS/MIC)

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This paper proposes an energy estimation technique utilizing only timing information from a Multi-channel Digital a SiPM (MD-SiPM) and presents a statistical analysis of the proposed approach for TOF PET applications with a LYSO scintillator. By utilizing only timing information for estimating energy of gamma photons, circuitry in the MD-SiPM is minimized so as to increase fill-factor and the dead time is reduced dramatically. The statistical analysis of the proposed estimation techniques show that the expected error of the estimate and its uncertainty are a function of the number of primary photons triggering the detector cells that, in turn, is a function of the energy of the gamma photon. The maximum uncertainty (FWHM) acquired by the random simulation is 345 photons in the range of 60-2000 primary photons by utilizing multiple photon timestamps arriving within only 4 nanosecond after the detection of the first photon.

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The lower bound on the timing resolution of scintillation detectors

Cited by 153 publications

References 33 publications

Perfomance of Silicon Photomultipliers in photon number and time resolution

Perfomance of Silicon Photomultipliers in photon number and time resolution

Practical time mark estimators for multichannel digital silicon photomultipliers

Energy estimation technique utilizing timing information for TOF-PET application

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