PLoS ONE (Jan 2017)

Novel scintillating material 2-(4-styrylphenyl)benzoxazole for the fully digital and MRI compatible J-PET tomograph based on plastic scintillators.

  • Anna Wieczorek,
  • Kamil Dulski,
  • Szymon Niedźwiecki,
  • Dominika Alfs,
  • Piotr Białas,
  • Catalina Curceanu,
  • Eryk Czerwiński,
  • Andrzej Danel,
  • Aleksander Gajos,
  • Bartosz Głowacz,
  • Marek Gorgol,
  • Beatrix Hiesmayr,
  • Bożena Jasińska,
  • Krzysztof Kacprzak,
  • Daria Kamińska,
  • Łukasz Kapłon,
  • Andrzej Kochanowski,
  • Grzegorz Korcyl,
  • Paweł Kowalski,
  • Tomasz Kozik,
  • Wojciech Krzemień,
  • Ewelina Kubicz,
  • Mateusz Kucharek,
  • Muhsin Mohammed,
  • Monika Pawlik-Niedźwiecka,
  • Marek Pałka,
  • Lech Raczyński,
  • Zbigniew Rudy,
  • Oleksandr Rundel,
  • Neha G Sharma,
  • Michał Silarski,
  • Tomasz Uchacz,
  • Wojciech Wiślicki,
  • Bożena Zgardzińska,
  • Marcin Zieliński,
  • Paweł Moskal

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186728
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 11
p. e0186728

Abstract

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A novel plastic scintillator is developed for the application in the digital positron emission tomography (PET). The novelty of the concept lies in application of the 2-(4-styrylphenyl)benzoxazole as a wavelength shifter. The substance has not been used as scintillator dopant before. A dopant shifts the scintillation spectrum towards longer wavelengths making it more suitable for applications in scintillators of long strips geometry and light detection with digital silicon photomultipliers. These features open perspectives for the construction of the cost-effective and MRI-compatible PET scanner with the large field of view. In this article we present the synthesis method and characterize performance of the elaborated scintillator by determining its light emission spectrum, light emission efficiency, rising and decay time of the scintillation pulses and resulting timing resolution when applied in the positron emission tomography. The optimal concentration of the novel wavelength shifter was established by maximizing the light output and it was found to be 0.05 ‰ for cuboidal scintillator with dimensions of 14 mm x 14 mm x 20 mm.