Scintillation materials and detectors on their base for non-destructive two energy testing

Abstract The dual-energy computer tomography (CT), as compared with its traditional single-energy scanners, ensures substantially higher contrast sensitivity. This allows efficient separate diagnostics of bone and muscle tissues by discerning between biological materials that substantially differ in their density and effective atomic number Z eff (by 2–3 times). Comparative parameters of different scintillators: CsI(Tl), CdWO 4 , ZnSe(Te) and ZnSe(Te,O) for dual-energy applications have been studied. The evaluation of the signal ratio from low-energy and high-energy detectors (HEDs) has been carried out using a simplified model of the dual-energy detector array. ZnSe filter in the low-energy detector (LED) array was used instead of metal filters. To observe two separate images (from high- and low-energy detectors), a standard processing set can be used: brightness, contrast, and gamma correction. The “gray” palette can be applied to a selected range only and not to the full data range. A possibility of dual-energy tomography use for osteoporosis diagnostics was considered. Direct image reconstruction of biological objects has been carried out using dual-energy X-ray detection. Experiments demonstrate significant distinction between soft and bone tissues, as well as details of bones with different density. The density of the bone depends on the calcium content, which is not more than 20% for the narrow part and about 18.5% in the broad part. These results are in good agreement with the results of the independent chemical analysis.