Energy calibration of energy-resolved photon-counting pixel detectors using laboratory polychromatic x-ray beams

Recently, photon-counting detectors capable of resolving incident x-ray photon energies have been considered for use in spectral x-ray imaging applications. For reliable use of energy-resolved photon-counting detectors (ERPCDs), energy calibration is an essential procedure prior to their use because variations in responses from each pixel of the ERPCD for incident photons, even at the same energy, are inevitable. Energy calibration can be performed using a variety of methods. In all of these methods, the photon spectra with well-defined peak energies are recorded. Every pixel should be calibrated on its own. In this study, we suggest the use of a conventional polychromatic x-ray source (that is typically used in laboratories) for energy calibration. The energy calibration procedure mainly includes the determination of the peak energies in the spectra, flood-field irradiation, determination of peak channels, and determination of calibration curves (i.e., the slopes and intercepts of linear polynomials). We applied a calibration algorithm to a CdTe ERPCD comprised of 128×128 pixels with a pitch of 0.35 mm using highly attenuated polychromatic x-ray beams to reduce the pulse pile-up effect, and to obtain a narrow-shaped spectrum due to beam hardening. The averaged relative error in calibration curves obtained from 16,384 pixels was about 0.56% for 59.6 keV photons from an Americium radioisotope. This pixel-by-pixel energy calibration enhanced the signal- and contrast-to-noise ratios in images, respectively, by a factor of ~5 and 3 due to improvement in image homogeneity, compared to those obtained without energy calibration. One secondary finding of this study was that the x-ray photon spectra obtained using a common algorithm for computing x-ray spectra reasonably described the peaks in the measured spectra, which implies easier peak detection without the direct measurement of spectra using a separate spectrometer. The proposed method will be a useful alternative to conventional approaches using radioisotopes, a synchrotron, or specialized x-ray sources (e.g., characteristic or fluorescent x-rays) by reducing concerns over the beam flux, the irradiation field of view, accessibility, and cost.