Development of Si/CdTe Compton camera for medical imaging

Yamaguchi, Mitsutaka*; Arakawa, Kazuo; Aono, Hiroyuki*; Ishikawa, Shinnosuke*; Kamiya, Tomihiro; Kawachi, Naoki; Odaka, Hirokazu*; Sakurai, Hideyuki*; Sato, Takahiro; Shimada, Hirofumi*; Suzuki, Yoshiyuki*; Takahashi, Tadayuki*; Takeda, Shinichiro*; Watanabe, Shigeki; Watanabe, Shin*; Yoshida, Yukari*; Nakano, Takashi*

We have developed a prototype of Compton camera using Si/CdTe semiconductors for medical imaging. In a Compton camera, employing the imaging semiconductors as the component of the Compton camera, with their good energy and position resolution, improves angular resolution and hence sensitivity. Moreover, for the supposed energy range of rays, from several tens keV to a few MeV, silicon is suitable for the scatter of Compton camera since the photo absorption cross section of Si is small and the Compton cross-section is relatively large because of the small atomic number. On the other hand, CdTe is suitable for the absorbers because of its high photo-absorption efficiency for rays of this energy region, due to the large atomic numbers. In this presentation we will summarize the basic principle and performance of the Si/CdTe Compton camera for medical imaging.