A fundamental limit on timing performance with scintillation detectors

Conference · Sun Apr 01 04:00:00 EDT 1990 · IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (USA)

OSTI ID:6609358

Clinthorne, N H; Petrick, N A; Rogers, W L ^[1]; Hero, A O ^[2]

---

1. Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI (USA). Div. of Nuclear Medicine
2. Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI (USA). Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

A new lower bound on the mean-squared error of post-detection {gamma}-ray time-of-flight estimators have been derived. Previously, the Cramer-Rao bound has been applied, but for nearly exponentially decaying scintillation pulses it gives an extremely optimistic picture of the achievable performance, depending critically on the dark current and photomultiplier characteristics. The new bound has been derived under the assumption that excited states in the scintillator leading to the emission of scintillation photons have an exponential lifetime density. The bound is a function of the mean state lifetime, the spectrum of energy deposited, and the energy conversion efficiency of the scintillator, and is exact for the observation of a mono-exponentially decaying photoelectron rate at the first dynode of the PMT given the {gamma}-ray arrival time.

• OSTI ID: 6609358
• Report Number(s): CONF-900143--
• Conference Information: Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (USA) Journal Volume: 37:2
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

440103* -- Radiation Instrumentation-- Nuclear Spectroscopic Instrumentation
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
DETECTION
ELEMENTARY PARTICLES
EMISSION SPECTRA
ENERGY LEVELS
EXCITED STATES
GAMMA DETECTION
IMAGE PROCESSING
MASSLESS PARTICLES
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT
PHOTOELECTROMAGNETIC EFFECTS
PHOTOMULTIPLIERS
PHOTONS
PHOTOTUBES
PROCESSING
RADIATION DETECTION
SPECTRA
SPECTROMETERS
TIME-OF-FLIGHT SPECTROMETERS