A scintillation detector signal processing technique with active pileup prevention for extending scintillation count rates

A new method for processing the signal from a scintillation detectors is proposed. This method has an active pileup prevention which significantly increases the maximum count-rate capability of scintillation counting. It dynamically adjusts the integration of scintillation light together with a simple (but exact) cancellation of the remnant light from all previous multiple pileups. A prototype circuit demonstrated that at normal count rates, its energy resolution is as good as that of the traditional pulse shaping (or the fixed integration) method, but, the maximum count rates has been increased by 10 times or more. At 2 million counts/sec for NaI(Tl), the true counts acquired is 3 times more than delay-line clipping. Pulse height spectra up to 3.5 million/sec was studied