modelling and image reconstruction evaluation of a scintillation camera with silicone photomultiplier

Background: recent research on photon detection has led to the introduction of a silicone photomultiplier (sipm) that operates at a low voltage and is insensitive to magnetic fields. objective: this work aims to model a scintillation camera with a sipm sensor and to evaluate the camera reconstructed images from gamma ray projection data. material and methods: the type of study in this research is experimental work and analytical. the scintillation camera, modelled from an sipm sensor array sl4-30035, coupled with a scintillation material caesium iodide doped with thallium (csi(tl)), is used in the experimental part. the performance of the camera was evaluated from reconstructed images by a back-projection technique of a radioactive source caesium-137 (cs-137). results: the experiments conducted with a 1 μci cs-137 radioactive source have revealed that the bias voltage (vbias) of the sipm needs to be set to 27.8 v at an operating temperature between 43 °c to 44 °c. the radioactive source has to be placed within a 1 cm distance from the sensor to obtain the optimum projection data. finally, the back-projection technique for image reconstruction with linear interpolation preprocessing has revealed that the ram-lak filter produces a better image contrast ratio compared to others. conclusion: this research has successfully modelled a scintillation camera with sipm that was able to reconstruct images with an 86.4% contrast ratio from gamma ray projection data.