Extended radiation source imaging with a prototype Compton imager

This paper reports results from a prototype Compton imager (PCI) which consists of three planes of silicon pixel detectors as a scattering detector followed by an array of CsI(Tl) crystals as an absorbing detector. The CsI(Tl) array is mounted directly behind the silicon detectors. Simple back-projection algorithms are not sufficient to resolve extended shapes, but iterative algorithms provide the necessary de-convolution. List-mode maximum likelihood expectation maximization (LM-MLEM) is an iterative algorithm that reconstructs the most probable source distribution for a given data set. LM-MLEM attempts to reconstruct an image by finding successive approximations to the true source data. Each data set imaged is different, but the number of iterations required for convergence is typically 10–30 for the PCI. In this paper, reconstructed images of point and extended sources using measured PCI data are presented. Data are corroborated using GEANT4 simulations.