Photonic Material Selection of Scintillation Crystals Using Monte Carlo Method for X-Ray Detection in Industrial Computed Tomography

Abstract

Currently industrial X-CT system is designed according to characteristics of test objects, and test objects determine industrial X-CT system structure, X-ray detector/sensor property, scanning mode, and so forth. So there are no uniform standards for the geometry size of scintillation crystals of detector. Moreover, scintillation crystals are usually mixed with some highly toxic impurity elements, such as Tl and Cd. Thus, it is indispensable for establishing guidelines of engineering practice to simulate X-ray detection performances of different scintillation crystals. This paper focuses on how to achieve high efficient X-ray detection in industrial X-CT system which used Monte Carlo (MC) method to study X-ray energy straggling characteristics, full energy peak efficiency, and conversion efficiency of some scintillation crystals (e.g., CsI(Tl), NaI(Tl), and CdWO4) after X-ray interacted with these scintillation crystals. Our experimental results demonstrate that CsI(Tl) scintillation crystal has the advantages of conversion efficiency, spectral matching, manufacturing process, and full energy peak efficiency; it is an ideal choice for high efficient X-ray detection in industrial X-CT system.