Translucent scintillator ceramics of Gd2O2S:Pr, Ce, F were fabricated using a hot isostatic pressing (HIP) technique. The optical transmission is about 60% of the incident light and the X-ray stopping power is also quite high. Owing to the enhancement of these properties by the HIP densification process, the highest light output from a 1 mm thick specimen combined with a silicon photodiode, when excited by 120 kV X-rays, has reached 1.8 times that of CdWO4 single crystals. The present ceramics are very promising candidates for scintillator materials in X-ray computed tomography (CT) detector applications.

The quality of CT images depends on the characteristics of the X-ray detector. In place of conventional xenon ionization detectors, we have designed a highly efficient solid state detector with low detector noise by using a Gd2O2S ceramic scintillator.