Imaging of radionuclide emissions with a low-noise charge-coupled device

The adaptation of a cooled charged-coupled device (CCD) for some autoradiographic applications which may alleviate some of the problems encountered with film is investigated. The proposed approach uses a scientific-grade CCD which is optically coupled via a lens to a scintillator without intermediate amplification. On the basis of experience with lens coupling, the performance of the CCD is investigated with the option of a fiberoptic coupling between the scintillator and CCD. The attainable performance by operating the CCD in the charge integration mode is explored experimentally, and computations are presented in order to predict the performance of a modified imaging system operating in the counting pulse-height mode for energy discrimination