A RADIATION DETECTION SYSTEM FOR HIGH-ENERGY COMPUTERIZED-TOMOGRAPHY USING CDZNTE DETECTORS

This work presents a particular application in which cadmium-zinc tell uride (CdZnTe) detectors are used in photoconductive mode in a high-en ergy computerized tomography system for industrial applications. A fir st-generation tomography facility has been set up at the University of Bologna, based on a 12-MeV pulsed linear accelerator X-ray source and a single 10x10x2 mm(3) CdZnTe detector.The obtained results show that CdZnTe detectors exhibit better timing performances than CdTe detecto rs, and are thus more suitable for tomographic applications. Special-p urpose signal conditioning electronics have been developed in order to compensate slow and fast signal fluctuations induced by temperature v ariations and Linac instabilities. In such a way, the dynamic range of the detector has been improved up to more than 3 orders of magnitude. A set of images was acquired in order to evaluate the overall perform ances of the tomographic facility.