Evaluation of a Micro-Channel Plate PMT in PET

The focus of this paper is the evaluation of micro-channel plate PMTs for PET detectors. Several properties of MCPs make them interesting for PET applications, such as fast time response, high spatial resolution, compact size, low susceptibility to magnetic fields, high gain and low power consumption. The preliminary tests in this paper are performed with the 51 mm times 51 mm square Burle 85011-501 assembly with 64 anodes (8 times 8). A new version of this MCP will be examined for the full paper. Initial measurements have been performed with a pulsed LASER (Hamamatsu Picosecond Light Pulser PLP-10 with M8903 Laser diode head). The engineering sample of the 85011 exhibited a time resolution of 26 ps. Further measurements will be performed, such as transit time measurements and timing measurements with scintillators. Single-photon timing measurements were presented earlier in [Ref. 1], from the old version as well as the suitability of the device in Cherenkov detectors in [Ref. 2]. For the full paper it is also planned to develop a circuit which allows lossless splitting of the anode signal.