A study of timing properties of Silicon Photomultipliers

Avella, Paola; Santo, A. De; Lohstroh, A.; Sajjad, Muhammad T.; Sellin, P.J.

doi:10.1016/j.nima.2011.11.049

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The decay time was measured to be 50ns hence corresponding to a SiPM capacitance of 500pF. Compared with the values measured in [29] we suspect a high passive capacitance in our system generated by rather long leads and jumpers used to guide the SiPM signal to NINO. The rise time can be determined to τ Mr = (C D +C q )R D [31].…”

Section: Single Cell Signalmentioning

confidence: 50%

“…If one of the micro cells or SPADs is fired, they always give rise to the same output signal, no matter how many photons initially triggered the avalanche. The single cell signal is defined by the SiPM's equivalent circuit and the circuitry around the SiPM [29]. In a first order approximation it arises from RC-filters and thus should only have exponential character.…”

Section: Organisation Of the Monte Carlo Simulation Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Time of flight positron emission tomography towards 100ps resolution with L(Y)SO: an experimental and theoretical analysis

et al. 2013

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Scintillation crystals have a wide range of applications in detectors for high energy and medical physics. They are recquired to have not only good energy resolution, but also excellent time resolution. In medical applications, L(Y)SO crystals are commonly used for time of flight positron emission tomography (TOF-PET). This study aims at determining the experimental and theoretical limits of timing using L(Y)SO based scintillators coupled to silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). Measurements are based on the time-over-threshold method in a coincidence setup utilizing the ultra-fast amplifier-discriminator NINO and a fast oscilloscope. Using a 2 × 2 × 3 mm 3 LSO:Ce codoped 0.4% Ca crystal coupled to a commercially available SiPM (Hamamatsu S10931-050P MPPC), we achieve a coincidence time resolution (CTR) of 108±5ps FWHM measured at E=511keV. We determine the influence of the data acquisition system to 27±2ps FWHM and thus negligible as compared to the CTR. This shows that L(Y)SO scintillators coupled to SiPM photodetectors are capable of achieving very good time resolution close to the desired 100ps FWHM for TOF-PET systems. To fully understand the measured values, we developed a simulation tool in MATLAB that incorporates the timing properties of the photodetector, the scintillation properties of the crystal and the light transfer within the crystal simulated by SLITRANI. The simulations are compared with measured data in order to determine their predictive power. Finally we use this model to discuss the influence of several important parameters on the time resolution like scintillation rise-and fall time and light yield, as well as single photon time resolution (SPTR) and the detection efficiency of the SiPM. In addition we find the influence of photon travel time spread in the crystal not negligible on the CTR, even for the used 2 × 2 × 3 mm 3 geometry.

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Section: Single Cell Signalmentioning

confidence: 50%

Section: Organisation Of the Monte Carlo Simulation Toolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time of flight positron emission tomography towards 100ps resolution with L(Y)SO: an experimental and theoretical analysis

et al. 2013

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“…Based on the above circuit analysis, we performed simulation via the Personal Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (PSPICE; Capture CIS, Cadence Design Systems Inc., US) to investigate the feasibility of the hybrid DPC. We used the equivalent circuit model of a Hamamatsu SiPM with the terminal capacitance (C d ) of 320 pF to obtain reliable simulation results (Seifert et al 2009, Avella et al 2012. The current source in the SiPM circuit model was generated based on the Geant4 application for tomographic emission (GATE) optical simulation (OpenGATE collaboration, France).…”

Section: Simulation Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Hybrid charge division multiplexing method for silicon photomultiplier based PET detectors

Park¹,

Ko²,

Lee³

2017

Phys. Med. Biol.

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Silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) is widely utilized in various positron emission tomography (PET) detectors and systems. However, the individual recording of SiPM output signals is still challenging owing to the high granularity of the SiPM; thus, charge division multiplexing is commonly used in PET detectors. Resistive charge division method is well established for reducing the number of output channels in conventional multi-channel photosensors, but it degrades the timing performance of SiPM-based PET detectors by yielding a large resistor-capacitor (RC) constant. Capacitive charge division method, on the other hand, yields a small RC constant and provides a faster timing response than the resistive method, but it suffers from an output signal undershoot. Therefore, in this study, we propose a hybrid charge division method which can be implemented by cascading the parallel combination of a resistor and a capacitor throughout the multiplexing network. In order to compare the performance of the proposed method with the conventional methods, a 16-channel Hamamatsu SiPM (S11064-050P) was coupled with a 4 × 4 LGSO crystal block (3 × 3 × 20 mm) and a 9 × 9 LYSO crystal block (1.2 × 1.2 × 10 mm). In addition, we tested a time-over-threshold (TOT) readout using the digitized position signals to further demonstrate the feasibility of the time-based readout of multiplexed signals based on the proposed method. The results indicated that the proposed method exhibited good energy and timing performance, thus inheriting only the advantages of conventional resistive and capacitive methods. Moreover, the proposed method showed excellent pulse shape uniformity that does not depend on the position of the interacted crystal. Accordingly, we can conclude that the hybrid charge division method is useful for effectively reducing the number of output channels of the SiPM array.

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“…The SiPM has been described using two different models as can be seen in figure 2. The model A [7] is more accurate than the model B [6,8]. But the model A cannot be used to simulate several microcells activated at the same time.…”

Section: The Sipm Spice Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Q determines the area value of the input current pulse from the SiPM spice model. The used parameters for Hamamatsu s10362-11-050 SiPM can be found in [6].…”

Section: The Sipm Spice Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of a timing integrated circuit architecture for continuous crystal and SiPM based PET systems

et al. 2013

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Improving timing resolution in positron emission tomography (PET), thus having fine time information of the detected pulses, is important to increase the reconstructed images signal to noise ratio (SNR) [1]. In the present work, an integrated circuit topology for time extraction of the incoming pulses is evaluated. An accurate simulation including the detector physics and the electronics with different configurations has been developed.The selected architecture is intended for a PET system based on a continuous scintillation crystal attached to a SiPM array. The integrated circuit extracts the time stamp from the first few photons generated when the gamma-ray interacts with the scintillator, thus obtaining the best time resolution. To get the time stamp from the detected pulses, a time to digital converter (TDC) array based architecture has been proposed as in [2] or [3]. The TDC input stage uses a current comparator to transform the analog signal into a digital signal. Individually configurable trigger levels allow us to avoid false triggers due to signal noise. Using a TDC per SiPM configuration results in a very area consuming integrated circuit. One solution to this problem is to join several SiPM outputs to one TDC. This reduces the number of TDCs but, on the other hand, the first photons will be more difficult to be detected. For this reason, it is important to simulate how the time resolution is degraded when the number of TDCs is reduced. Following this criteria, the best configuration will be selected considering the trade-off between achievable time resolution and the cost per chip.A simulation is presented that uses Geant4 for simulation of the physics process and, for the electronic blocks, spice and Matlab. The Geant4 stage simulates the gamma-ray interaction with the scintillator, the photon shower generation and the first stages of the SiPM. The electronics simulation includes an electrical model of the SiPM array and all the integrated circuitry that generates the time stamps. Time resolution results are analyzed using Matlab. The goal is to analyze the best resolution achievable with the SiPM and its degradation due to different circuitry configurations.

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A study of timing properties of Silicon Photomultipliers

Cited by 10 publications

References 4 publications

Time of flight positron emission tomography towards 100ps resolution with L(Y)SO: an experimental and theoretical analysis

Time of flight positron emission tomography towards 100ps resolution with L(Y)SO: an experimental and theoretical analysis

Hybrid charge division multiplexing method for silicon photomultiplier based PET detectors

Evaluation of a timing integrated circuit architecture for continuous crystal and SiPM based PET systems

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