Optimization of detection geometry for industrial SPECT by Monte Carlo simulations

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has developed an industrial SPECT to investigate the fluid flow and mixing patterns in columns. It has been found that the industrial SPECT is indeed a very powerful tool to study the hydrodynamics in multiphase reactors. One of the practical issues in the development of industrial SPECTs is to achieve a required imaging resolution of an industrial SPECT with a minimum number of component detectors, the number of which is frequently limited by both the size of the detectors and the total cost of the imaging system. In the present study, a set of different geometries of industrial SPECTs were evaluated by Monte Carlo simulation using MCNPX to determine the minimum number of detectors that will provide a spatial resolution that corresponds to 10% of the cylindrical column diameter. Our results show that 11 and 12 detectors will satisfy the 10% resolution requirement for the 40 cm and 60 cm diameter columns, respectively, for the industrial SPECT and radioisotopes considered in the present study. The conclusion of this result is valid only for the case considered in the present study, but we believe that the same procedure can be applied to other industrial SPECTs for this kind of optimization.