Patent ID: 8809790

Claim:
A method comprising: steps for choosing the optimum detector for producing bursts of optical photons in response to events comprising incident radiation; steps for arranging photodetectors in a honeycomb array into a plurality of detector zones for concurrently converting said bursts of optical photons into signal outputs thereby achieving high sensitivity; steps for identifying valid events while rejecting signal outputs due to misplaced pileup events arising from scattered photons of said incident radiation steps for exchanging excess detector sensitivity for spatial resolution by significantly reducing the detector's thickness, which leads to reduction in depth-of-interaction (DOI) blurring and minimizes blurring due to Compton-scattered radiation, enabling nuclear images of unprecedented resolution and signal-tonoise ratio (SNR) to be obtained; steps for simultaneously generating energy and position signals for events at multiple detector zones during a single deadtime period, thereby reducing effective detector deadtime and increasing count-rate capability; and steps for transferring said energy and position signals to computer memory by means of a high-speed multiplexer for data analysis and image display.