Quantitative dynamic imaging of biological processes with solid state radiation detectors

We have developed a technique and a prototype for β-rays and γ-rays quantitative imaging of biological samples which have been radioactively labeled. The prototype is based on a solid state pixel detector, bump-bonded to a low threshold, single particle counting chip: the detector we used is 200-μm thick GaAs, with pixel size 170 μm. In this paper we describe an experiment that shows the capability of monitoring a dynamic process. Specifically, [¹⁴C]L-Leucine uptake by eggs of mollusk cephalopod Octopus vulgaris and the consequent migration of marker into the ooplasm was followed