A radiation detection system for high-energy computerized tomography using CdZnTe detectors

This work presents a particular application in which cadmium-zinc telluride (CdZnTe) detectors are used in photoconductive mode in a high-energy computerized tomography system for industrial applications. A first-generation tomography facility has been set up at the University of Bologna, based on a 12-MeV pulsed linear accelerator X-ray source and a single 10×10×2 mm³ CdZnTe detector. The obtained results show that CdZnTe detectors exhibit better timing performances than CdTe detectors, and are thus more suitable for tomographic applications. Special-purpose signal conditioning electronics have been developed in order to compensate slow and fast signal fluctuations induced by temperature variations and Linac instabilities, In such a way, the dynamic range of the detector has been improved up to more than 3 orders of magnitude. A set of images was acquired in order to evaluate the overall performances of the tomographic facility