A positron camera detector design with cross-coupled scintillators and quadrant sharing photomultipliers

A new positron camera scintillation detector design is proposed. This design uses discrete scintillators which are tightly optically coupled (glued) together to form a block. The coupling interfaces between crystals have different degrees of polish depending on the interface location within the block. Each block has the same dimension as that of the photomultipliers (PMTs) used, but the blocks and the PMT array are offset in both X-Y directions. The advantages of the design are: (a) higher detection efficiency with almost 100% packing fraction; (b) very uniform signal pulse-heights even for very small crystals at the edge of the block; (c) decoding which is less dependent on the depth of interaction; (d) significant decrease in the number of PMTs by up to 75%; and (e) with the smallest PMT (1.0 cm) currently available, spatial resolution in the range of 1-2 mm is possible