Multianode photomultiplier tube studies for imaging applications

Highly efficient and position sensitive photon detection is essential in a variety of applications from particle identification in fundamental nuclear and particle physics research, to radionuclide imaging in healthcare. Due to their position sensitivity and high packing fraction, the Hamamatsu H8500 and H9500 multianode photomultiplier tubes (MAPMTs) are promising candidates for such applications and have thus been studied through precision laser scans at several light intensities. This has revealed signal and crosstalk dependencies upon constructional features of the MAPMTs. Both MAPMTs feature a common last dynode output signal, which can be used for self-triggering. The strength and timing of this signal have been investigated for the H8500 MAPMT, yielding similar dependencies upon MAPMT construction and standard deviation time resolutions of 67.5 ps and 154.4 ps for 20 and single photoelectron signals respectively.