Comparative study of the pulse shape discrimination (PSD) performance of pixelated stilbene and plastic scintillator (EJ-276) arrays for a coded-aperture-based hand-held dual-particle imager

Abstract

As the demand for the detection of special nuclear materials (SNMs) increases, the use of imaging instruments that can sensitively image both gamma-ray and neutron signatures has become necessary. This study compared the pulse shape discrimination (PSD) performance of gamma/neutron events when employing either a pixelated stilbene or a plastic (EJ-276) scintillator array coupled to a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) array in a dual-particle imager. The stilbene array allowed a lower energy threshold above which neutron and gamma-ray events can be clearly distinguished. A greater number of events can, therefore, be used when forming both gamma-ray and neutron images, which shortens the time required to acquire the images by nearly seven times.

Keywords

• Hand-held
• Coded-aperture imager
• Pixelated stilbene scintillator array
• Pixelated plastic scintillator array
• Pulse shape discrimination