Combinatorial Search of Advanced Scintillators for Medical Imaging Systems

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Scintillators are the "eyes" of many modern medical imaging diagnosis systems, whose performance, to a large extent, is determined by the choice of scintillators. The recent demands for faster (e.g. from PET, which requires nanoseconds of fluorescent decay time) and more sensitive (e.g. from SPECT) medical detectors in noisy in-vivo environments, are pushing the need for discovering advanced scintillators that are heavy (with a large stopping power for high energy particles), fast (e.g. nanoseconds of fluorescent decay time and no afterglow), highly sensitive (with a high quantum efficiency), and high energy resolution. Unfortunately, no single scintillator currently known has all these desirable properties. The objective of the SBIR Phase I project is to develop, validate, and apply a combinatorial synthesis and high throughput screening (HTS) technique to the rapid discovery of efficient, fast and heavy inorganic scintillators for advanced digital detectors in various medical imaging systems, including SPECT (single photon emission computer tomography) and PET (positron emission tomography). Collaborating with the highly experienced and well-equipped medical scintillator research group in Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, LS Technologies will develop the highly efficient combinatorial scintillator synthesis and screening tools, before validating their accuracy with well known state-of-art scintillators. With the tools developed and validated in phase I, a comprehensive search of "ideal" scintillators with overall superior properties than any existing scintillator will be conducted in Phase II for advanced medical detector applications. The advanced scintillator will significantly enhance the speed and accuracy of the existing medical imaging diagnosis systems, including CT, PET, X-ray imaging, etc. That translates into a faster and lower cost of medical diagnosis, as well as accurate detection of diseases in early stages.