Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040

www.elsevier.com/locate/anucene

Pinhole collimator design for nuclear

survey system
Wanno Lee*, Gyuseong Cho
Department of Nuclear Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST),
373-1 Kusong-dong, Yusong-gu, Taejon, 305-701, South Korea

Received 23 August 2001; received in revised form 15 February 2002; accepted 19 February 2002

Abstract
A conventional knife-edge collimator, which is widely used in gamma camera for medical
diagnosis, is not suitable for nuclear imaging system because many scattering radiations near the
pinhole aperture happen and blur image. A new pinhole collimator, which shapes a channeled
aperture for reducing image degradation induced by the scattering radiations, is introduced and
its characteristics are analyzed by Monte Carlo simulation. Resolutions defined as the full-width
at half-maximum (FWHM) of point spread function and efficiencies are calculated about several
pinhole diameters from 4 to 8 mm and channel heights from 2 to 10 mm. For this calculation, we
assumed that 137Cs radiation sources with 662 keV mono-energies enter into our designed
collimator at the 1 m distance from the detector plane. The efficiencies and resolutions of the
channeled collimator are compared with those of the conventional collimator. By comparison
results, it is verified that the new collimator takes advantage more than the conventional col-
limator. The optimum channel height and diameter of the pinhole collimator from simulation
results are also proposed and designed. We finally acquired nuclear image mounting this colli-
mator in the nuclear survey system. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The collimator plays an important role determining image quality in a medical

gamma camera as well as nuclear survey system. However its researches for nuclear
field applications have not been accomplished unlike its enough analyses in a medical
system (Smith et al., 1997; Mortimer and Anger, 1954; Johnson et al., 1995; Redus

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 82-42-869-3881; fax: 82-42-869-3810.

E-mail address: petor@cais.kaist.ac.kr (W. Lee).

0306-4549/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0306-4549(02)00031-2
2030 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040

et al., 1992). The collimator design for nuclear survey system should be differently
taken into consideration from the collimator for medical environments because it
has always been used in the high-energy radiation environments.
Several types of collimator could be used in nuclear survey but a pinhole colli-
mator is the most useful for nuclear imaging because large area monitoring is pos-
sible and it takes advantage of the same angular resolution irrelative to the distance
between a source and a system.
We have developed a nuclear survey system with the pinhole collimator that is com-
posed of combined charge-coupled devices (CCD) and a gamma imaging system that
produces a color image of gamma rays through the superimposition of white and
black at surroundings of the source (Lee et al., in press). Fig. 1 shows the developed
prototype system.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the optimum pinhole aperture design for
accomplishing the improved image at high-energy radiation field under the condition
that the collimator efficiency is greater than the minimum value for being able to
obtain the distinguished image from background radiation.
In this paper, characteristics of the knife-edge and the channel type collimator are
analyzed by the MCNP 4B photon simulation code, which can be used for neutron,
photon, electron, or coupled neutron/photon/electron transport (Briesmeister,
1997). The channel type is selected by these analyses and we also verify these simu-
lation results through experimental test of two types of collimators.
After determining the collimator shape, our studies consisted of parameter calcu-
lations and Monte Carlo simulations in order to optimize the channel height and
diameter. Experimental studies are used to test and evaluate the channeled pinhole
collimator due to the change of two parameters.

2. Materials and methods

In order to simulate interaction with radiation and detector due to aperture diameters
and channel heights, the MCNP 4B transport code is used. MCNP input geometry
consists of three components and has the same structure with the real senor of our
developed system.
The first components are the lead and aluminum parts for shielding environmental
radiation, which also support the pinhole aperture. For shielding about 1.4 MeV-
environment radiations of 40K, the lead thickness of 20 mm is selected and it can shield
the half value of the 40K. The aluminum thickness of 5 mm for supporting the lead
weight is determined. The focal length defined as the distance from the pinhole aperture
to scintillator crystal is 108.8 mm and the field of view of the pinhole collimator is
42
when it is inserted into the system.
The second component is the scintillation crystal part. We assume that the crystal
type is NaI(Tl), which was made by Alpha Spectra Co. The crystal thickness, dia-
meter, and density are respectively 10 mm, 51 mm and 3.67 g/cm3. The gamma ray
energy resolution of this crystal was proposed about 11% and the measured results
showed about 12% at 662 keV.
 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040 2031

Fig. 1. The developed prototype system: (a) radiation imaging camera without CCD visual camera is
composed of the sensor, NIM bin module, and data acquisition board and (b) the acquisition software.
2032 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040

The third is the pinhole collimator mounted on the lead head. In order to consider
the experimental facility, the collimator is composed of lead cap and tungsten alloy
pinhole.
Fig. 2(a) shows MCNP input geometry and source distribution is shown in
Fig. 2(b). The spatial resolution and efficiency are calculated by Monte Carlo
method due to the collimator types and channel heights. The distance between the
source and crystal plane is 1000 mm and solid angle of the source about pinhole

Fig. 2. (a) Input geometry for MCNP simulation and (b) the source distribution passed the pinhole and
scattered photons.
 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040 2033

Fig. 3. Cross section of (a) knife-edge collimator and (b) channeled collimator.

plane is 1.8
. Geometries of the conventional and channeled pinhole are shown in
Fig. 3(a) and (b). In order to evaluate the spatial resolution, we assume that the
crystal is voxelized by 515110. The dimension of each voxel is 111 mm.
Therefore, the maximum accuracy of resolution in this simulation is 1 mm.
The collimator efficiency is calculated by summing photon numbers accumulated
in the each voxel and if they are less than 5% of maximum photon numbers, they
are rejected for reduction of simulation error.
Collimators having several diameters and channel heights for experimental study
are designed based on calculated and simulated results. For comparison of the
scattering radiations created near the hole of the knife-edge and channeled colli-
mator, we also designed the 4 mm diameter collimator of two types and measured
2034 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040

the characteristics with standard point sources shielded by lead. As the nuclear
imaging principle was described in the previous study (Lee et al., 2001), the same
method was used in this paper. We compared the spatial resolutions and efficiencies
of collimators having different channel heights with the line phantom and acquired
the nuclear image for the channeled pinhole collimator.

Fig. 4. Point spread function of (a) knife –edge collimator with the 4 mm pinhole diameter and (b)
channeled collimator of 2 mm height with 4 mm pinhole diameter.
 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040 2035

3. Results

Resolutions of the knife-edge and the channeled collimator of channel height (2

mm) with 4 mm pinhole diameter are shown in Fig. 4(a) and (b). These figures
explain an effect of the channel height about image resolution. The channeled
collimator can reduce image blurring because of decreasing the scattering radiation
near the hole, however the image of the knife-edge collimator at high-energy radia-
tion field broaden because of the scattered photons increased near the hole and
shielding material. Therefore, the knife-edge collimator is not suitable for a nuclear
survey system. According to these calculations, the spatial resolution of the channel
collimator is better than that of the knife-edge by about 37.5% although the
efficiency decreases by about 30.6%. These results are similar to the experimental
value.
Fig. 5(a) shows the FWHM of point spread function (PSF) due to the change of
the channel height and diameter. As the pinhole diameter is narrow and the channel
height is long, the PSF becomes sharp. Under the same conditions of Fig. 5(a), the
collimator efficiencies are calculated and shown in Fig. 5(b). The efficiency inclines
to decrease due to increase the channel height, as expected.
In this paper the system sensitivity, which is determined by other components of
an electronic system and data acquisition board besides the collimator (Guru et al.,
1995; Redus et al., 1994; Gal et al., 2000), is defined as the minimum activity
required for a source to be detected significantly above the noise level of the camera
(Redus et al., 1996). This is described in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio as

Nsource  Nbkg Csource  Cbkg

S¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð1Þ
Nbkg Cbkg =t

where S is the sensitivity, Nsource is the total source count detected by the nuclear
survey system during the setting time, Nbkg is the total background count during the
same time without a source, Csource is the counting rate of the source plus background,
and Cbkg is the counting rate of the background without the source.
It is usually the minimum requirement of nuclear survey systems like our devel-
oped camera that the sensitivity should be acquired more than 6 for obtaining the
meaningful image from the background noise. We used this value about the 137Cs
source of 100 Ci located in the 1000 mm distance from the detector plane during 60
s measurement time.
By using Eq (1) when the background count rate (Cbkg ) is 4 #/s, which was
measured by our developed system, the source count rate (Csource ) is calculated as a
5.55 #/s.
Intrinsic and absolute efficiencies are defined as (Knoll, 1989)

number of pulse recorded

"int ¼ ð2Þ
number of radiation quanta incident in detector
2036 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040

Fig. 5. (a) Resolutions defined as the FWHM of point spread function and (b) collimator efficiencies due
to the change of channel height and diameter.

number of pulse recorded

"abs ¼ : ð3Þ
number of radiation quanta emitted by source

By using Eqs. (2) and (3), the collimator efficiency is given by

 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040 2037

"abs number of radiation quanta incident in detector

"col ¼ ¼ : ð4Þ
"int number of radiation quanta emitted by source

The peak efficiency assumes that only those interactions that deposit the full
energy of the incident radiation are counted. The total and peak count efficiency are
related by the peak-to-total ratio as

number of peak counts recorded by the full energy deposition

r¼ ð5Þ
number of pulses recorded

Fig. 6. The real image of line phantom shaping a cylinder that has the 10 mm length and 2 mm diameter:
(a) the channel height is 2 mm and (b) the channel height is 6 mm with the 4 mm pinhole diameter.
2038 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040

where r is the peak-to-total ratio (Knoll, 1989).

If the peak cont rate with our system is measured about the known source activities,
this value is then expressed by

Csource ¼ A  "abs  r ¼ A  "col  "int  r

Csource ð6Þ
"col ¼
A  r  "int

where A is the source activity.

The count rate (Csource ) and source activity (A) are proposed above. In addition,
the peak-to-total ration (r) is determined as 0.027 through measurements as well as
simulation. The limit value level of the collimator efficiency is calculated by the Eq.
(6) as 1:5  106 because the intrinsic efficiency ("int ) is actually less than 1. The limit
value level based on this calculation is shown in Fig. 5(b). The collimator efficiency
more than this limit value is required at the nuclear survey systems.
Fig. 6(a) and (b) shows line images obtained through experiments at the same
diameter (4 mm) when the channel height is changed from 2 to 6 mm. These figures
apparently prove our simulation results that the increase of the channel height
achieves higher resolution at the expense of decreased efficiency.
Therefore, both factors should be considered simultaneously for the optimum
design of the pinhole collimator. Fig. 7 shows the relative value considered the reso-
lution and efficiency about the height and diameter having more than the limit level.
The 4 mm pinhole diameter with the channel height (2 mm) is proposed as an
optimum condition for the nuclear survey system. The real image using this designed

Fig. 7. The relative value considered the collimator efficiencies and resolutions: it shows that the optimum
value is the 4 mm pinhole diameter with the 2 mm channel height.
 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040 2039

137
Fig. 8. The real radiation images at the Cs point source: (a) left image is displayed by 128128, (b)
right image is displayed by 256256.

pinhole collimator is given in Fig. 8 when the 137Cs point source is emitted at the 1 m
distance as explained above.

4. Conclusion

The channeled pinhole collimator for application at high-energy radiation field is

introduced and its characteristics are analyzed by Monte Carlo method. When we
compared with resolutions of the knife-edge and the channel collimator at the same
diameter, resolution degradation of the knife-edge collimator from the scattering
radiation near the hole was heavier than that of the channeled collimator. Using the
minimum requirements of the nuclear survey system that the sensitivity should be
more than 6 for obtaining the meaningful images from background noise, the limit
value of the collimator efficiency is calculated and the optimum height and diameter
of pinhole is proposed. We get the real image with this designed pinhole at the 137Cs
point source. This proposed method could be applied in the optimum pinhole design
for the similar nuclear survey instruments with our developed system.
In the future, we will plan to obtain radiation images in the industrial fields or
nuclear facilities with this pinhole.

References

Briesmeister, J.F., 1997. MCNP—A General Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport Code Version 4B. Los
Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico.
2040 W. Lee, G. Cho / Annals of Nuclear Energy 29 (2002) 2029–2040

Gal, O., Jean, F., Laine, F., Leveque, C., 2000. The CARTOGAM portable gamma imaging system.
IEEE Trans. Nuclear Science 47 (3), 952–956.
Guru, S.V., He, Z., Wehe, D.K., Knoll, G.F., 1995. A portable gamma imaging system for radiation
monitoring. IEEE Trans. Nuclear Science 42 (4), 940–944.
Johnson, E.L., Jaszczak, R.J., Wang, H., Li, J., Greer, K.L., Coleman, R.E., 1995. Pinhole SPECT for
imaging in-111 in the head. IEEE Trans. Nuclear Science 42 (4), 1126–1132.
Knoll, G.F., 1989. Radiation Detection and Measurement. John Willey and Sons, Inc., New York.
Lee, W., Cho, G., Kim, H.D. in press. A radiation monitoring system with the capability of gamma
imaging and the estimation of exposure dose rate. IEEE Trans. Nuclear Science.
Mortimer, R.K., Anger, H.O., 1954. The Gamma Ray Pinhole Camera with Image Amplifier. Conv.
Record I.R.E., Pt 9, 2–5.
Redus, R.H., Nagarkar, V., Cirignano, L.J., 1992. A nuclear survey instrument with imaging capability.
IEEE Trans. Nuclear Science 39 (4), 948–951.
Redus, R., Squillante, M., Gordon, J., Knoll, G.F., Wehe, D., 1994. A combined video and gamma ray
imaging system for robots nuclear environments. NIM in Physics Research A 353, 324–327.
Redus, R.H., Squillante, M., Gordon, J.S., Bennett, P., Entine, G., 1996. An imaging nuclear survey
system. IEEE Trans. Nuclear Science 43 (3), 1827–1831.
Smith, F.M., Jaszczak, R.J., Wang, H., 1997. Pinhole aperture design for 131I tumor imaging. IEEE
Trans. Nuclear Science 44 (3), 1154–1160.