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Architecture-Level Optimization on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Medical Imaging

Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are arrays of single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) connected in parallel. Analog silicon photomultipliers are built in custom technologies optimized for detection efficiency. Digital silicon photomultipliers are built in CMOS technology. Although CMOS SPADs are les...

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Autores principales: Bandi, Franco, Ilisie, Victor, Vornicu, Ion, Carmona-Galán, Ricardo, Benlloch, José M., Rodríguez-Vázquez, Ángel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8749722/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35009665
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22010122
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author Bandi, Franco
Ilisie, Victor
Vornicu, Ion
Carmona-Galán, Ricardo
Benlloch, José M.
Rodríguez-Vázquez, Ángel
author_facet Bandi, Franco
Ilisie, Victor
Vornicu, Ion
Carmona-Galán, Ricardo
Benlloch, José M.
Rodríguez-Vázquez, Ángel
author_sort Bandi, Franco
collection PubMed
description Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are arrays of single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) connected in parallel. Analog silicon photomultipliers are built in custom technologies optimized for detection efficiency. Digital silicon photomultipliers are built in CMOS technology. Although CMOS SPADs are less sensitive, they can incorporate additional functionality at the sensor plane, which is required in some applications for an accurate detection in terms of energy, timestamp, and spatial location. This additional circuitry comprises active quenching and recharge circuits, pulse combining and counting logic, and a time-to-digital converter. This, together with the disconnection of defective SPADs, results in a reduction of the light-sensitive area. In addition, the pile-up of pulses, in space and in time, translates into additional efficiency losses that are inherent to digital SiPMs. The design of digital SiPMs must include some sort of optimization of the pixel architecture in order to maximize sensitivity. In this paper, we identify the most relevant variables that determine the influence of SPAD yield, fill factor loss, and spatial and temporal pile-up in the photon detection efficiency. An optimum of 8% is found for different pixel sizes. The potential benefits of molecular imaging of these optimized and small-sized pixels with independent timestamping capabilities are also analyzed.
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spelling pubmed-87497222022-01-12 Architecture-Level Optimization on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Medical Imaging Bandi, Franco Ilisie, Victor Vornicu, Ion Carmona-Galán, Ricardo Benlloch, José M. Rodríguez-Vázquez, Ángel Sensors (Basel) Article Silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) are arrays of single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) connected in parallel. Analog silicon photomultipliers are built in custom technologies optimized for detection efficiency. Digital silicon photomultipliers are built in CMOS technology. Although CMOS SPADs are less sensitive, they can incorporate additional functionality at the sensor plane, which is required in some applications for an accurate detection in terms of energy, timestamp, and spatial location. This additional circuitry comprises active quenching and recharge circuits, pulse combining and counting logic, and a time-to-digital converter. This, together with the disconnection of defective SPADs, results in a reduction of the light-sensitive area. In addition, the pile-up of pulses, in space and in time, translates into additional efficiency losses that are inherent to digital SiPMs. The design of digital SiPMs must include some sort of optimization of the pixel architecture in order to maximize sensitivity. In this paper, we identify the most relevant variables that determine the influence of SPAD yield, fill factor loss, and spatial and temporal pile-up in the photon detection efficiency. An optimum of 8% is found for different pixel sizes. The potential benefits of molecular imaging of these optimized and small-sized pixels with independent timestamping capabilities are also analyzed. MDPI 2021-12-24 /pmc/articles/PMC8749722/ /pubmed/35009665 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22010122 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Bandi, Franco
Ilisie, Victor
Vornicu, Ion
Carmona-Galán, Ricardo
Benlloch, José M.
Rodríguez-Vázquez, Ángel
Architecture-Level Optimization on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Medical Imaging
title Architecture-Level Optimization on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Medical Imaging
title_full Architecture-Level Optimization on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Medical Imaging
title_fullStr Architecture-Level Optimization on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Medical Imaging
title_full_unstemmed Architecture-Level Optimization on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Medical Imaging
title_short Architecture-Level Optimization on Digital Silicon Photomultipliers for Medical Imaging
title_sort architecture-level optimization on digital silicon photomultipliers for medical imaging
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8749722/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35009665
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22010122
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