Employing Thin HPGe Detectors for Gamma-Ray Imaging

We have evaluated a collimator-less gamma-ray imaging system, which is based on thin layers of double-sided strip HPGe detectors. The position of individual gamma-ray interactions will be deduced by the strip addresses and the Ge layers which fired. Therefore, high bandwidth pulse processing is not required as in thick Ge detectors. While the drawback of such a device is the increased number of electronics channels to be read out and processed, there are several advantages, which are particularly important for remote applications: the operational voltage can be greatly reduced to fully deplete the detector and no high bandwidth signal processing electronics is required to determine positions. Only a charge sensitive preamplifier, a slow pulse shaping amplifier, and a fast discriminator are required on a per channel basis in order to determine photon energy and interaction position in three dimensions. Therefore, the power consumption and circuit board real estate can be minimized. More importantly, since the high bandwidth signal shapes are not used to determine the depth position, lower energy signals can be processed. The processing of these lower energy signals increases the efficiency for the recovery of small angle scattering. Currently, we are studying systems consisting of up to ten 2mm thick Ge layers with 2mm pitch size. The required electronics of the few hundred channels can be integrated to reduce space and power. We envision applications in nuclear non-proliferation and gamma-ray astronomy where ease of operation and low power consumption, and reliability, are crucial