Impact of anti-charge sharing on the zero-frequency detective quantum efficiency of CdTe-based photon counting detector system: cascaded systems analysis and experimental validation

Inter-pixel communication and anti-charge sharing (ACS) technologies have been introduced to photon counting detector (PCD) systems to address the undesirable charge sharing problem. In addition to improving the energy resolution of PCD, ACS may also influence other aspects of PCD performance such as detector multiplicity (i.e. the number of pixels triggered by each interacted photon) and detective quantum efficiency (DQE). In this work, a theoretical model was developed to address how ACS impacts the multiplicity and zero-frequency DQE [DQE(0)] of PCD systems. The work focused on cadmium telluride (CdTe)-based PCD that often involves the generation and transport of K-fluorescence photons. Under the parallel cascaded systems analysis framework, the theory takes both photoelectric and scattering effects into account, and it also considers both the reabsorption and escape of photons. In a new theoretical treatment of ACS, it was considered as a modified version of the conventional single pixel (i.e. non-ACS) mode, but with reduced charge spreading distance and K-fluorescence travel distance. The proposed theoretical model does not require prior knowledge of the detailed ACS implementation method for each specific PCD, and its parameters can be experimentally determined using a radioisotope without invoking any Monte-Carlo simulation. After determining the model parameters, independent validation experiments were performed using a diagnostic x-ray tube and four different polychromatic beams (from 50 to 120 kVp). Both the theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that ACS increased the first and second moments of multiplicity for a majority of the x-ray energy and threshold levels tested, except when the threshold level was much lower than the x-ray energy level. However, ACS always improved DQE(0) at all energy and threshold levels tested.