Collimated Radiation Source and Scintillating Fibre Plate for Medical Imaging
AssigneeNokia Technologies Oy
InventorZoran RADIVOJEVIC
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An apparatus including a scintillator arrangement including a plurality of optically isolated scintillators that extend lengthwise along a plurality of respective parallel axes and define respective scintillation channels, wherein each of the optically isolated scintillators extends lengthwise between an input interface and an output interface and is arranged to receive higher energy photons at the input interface, to convert high energy photons to lower energy photons, and to output lower energy photons from the output interface in a respective scintillation channel, wherein the optical isolation reduces transmission of lower energy photons between scintillation channels.
Claims15
An apparatus comprising:
- a scintillator arrangement comprising:
- a plurality of optically isolated scintillators that extend lengthwise along a plurality of respective parallel axes and define respective scintillation channels, wherein each of the optically isolated scintillators extends lengthwise between an input interface and an output interface and is arranged to receive higher energy photons at the input interface, to convert high energy photons to lower energy photons, and to output lower energy photons from the output interface in a respective scintillation channel, wherein the optical isolation reduces transmission of lower energy photons between scintillation channels.
A collimated radiation source comprising:
- one or more radiation sources for producing high energy photons;
- and
- a collimated high energy photon guide comprising a plurality of parallel, elongate apertures through a shielding layer that absorbs high energy photons.
A system comprising:
- a collimated radiation source configured to provide high energy photons along a plurality of parallel high energy photon paths;
- and
- a scintillator arrangement comprising a plurality of optically isolated scintillators arranged in parallel along parallel axes.
A medical imaging method comprising:
- producing streams of high energy photons along a plurality of parallel high energy photon paths through a target;
- aligning a plurality of optically independent scintillators with high energy photon paths, wherein the plurality of optically independent scintillators convert the high energy photons to lower energy photons constrained to parallel low energy photon paths;
- and
- detecting the lower energy photons along the parallel low energy photon paths to define an image of the target.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.