Novel data evaluation algorithm for Coincident Doppler Broadening Spectroscopy

•A more efficient data evaluation algorithm for CDBS is presented.•The SNR in parts of the CDB spectrum is improved by one order of magnitude.•Variable binning combines good resolution with lowest measurement error.•The mean detector resolution is extracted from the CDBS data.

In Coincident Doppler Broadening Spectroscopy (CDBS) the sum energy of the annihilation photons is checked to be 1022 keV, to validate the measurement of an undisturbed two-gamma electron–positron decay event. The events are stored in a two-dimensional acquisition matrix. A new algorithm is presented, which optimizes the extraction of the one-dimensional CDBS spectrum from this matrix by enhanced background suppression by the use of variable size bins.