Comparative study of the pulse shape discrimination (PSD) performance of pixelated stilbene and plastic scintillator (EJ-276) arrays for a coded-aperture-based hand-held dual-particle imager

As the demand for the detection of special nuclear materials (SNMs) increases, the use of imaging in-struments that can sensitively image both gamma-ray and neutron signatures has become necessary. This study compared the pulse shape discrimination (PSD) performance of gamma/neutron events when employing either a pixelated stilbene or a plastic (EJ-276) scintillator array coupled to a silicon photo -multiplier (SiPM) array in a dual-particle imager. The stilbene array allowed a lower energy threshold above which neutron and gamma-ray events can be clearly distinguished. A greater number of events can, therefore, be used when forming both gamma-ray and neutron images, which shortens the time required to acquire the images by nearly seven times.(c) 2023 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

As the demand for detecting special nuclear materials (SNMs) increases, it has become necessary to use imaging instruments that can sensitively image both gamma-ray and neutron signatures. This study compared the performance of pulse shape discrimination (PSD) for gamma/neutron events using either a pixelated stilbene or a plastic (EJ-276) scintillator array coupled to a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) array in a dual-particle imager. The stilbene array allowed for a lower energy threshold, making it possible to clearly distinguish between neutron and gamma-ray events. Consequently, a greater number of events can be used to form both gamma-ray and neutron images, reducing the image acquisition time by nearly seven times.