Imaging performance characterization of the pixelated scintillation screens for neutron imaging

The application of neutron imaging is expanding to the fields of power sources such as fuel cells and lithium ion batteries and many scientific applications. Digital neutron imaging systems with high spatial resolution have become popular for the last decades. A cooled CCD camera in combination with a scintillation screen is widely used as digital detector for neutron imaging. Amorphous silicon flat panel detectors and CMOS detectors have been used as efficient measurement options to avoid lens optics. Spatial resolution is mainly determined by the combination of scintillation screen and CCD detection system. The thickness of the conventional scintillation screen is related to spatial resolution because it trades off the light spread function and the light output of the screens. A lot of efforts have been made in x-ray imaging to improve spatial resolution using an array-structured scintillation screen. The main idea is to reduce the diffusion of scintillation light by using the walls of array structures in scintillation screens. In this study, pixelated scintillation screens with various pitch size were fabricated and evaluated for neutron imaging