US Patent 10101470 Laser etched scintillation crystals for increased performance

A detector array for an imaging system includes an array of scintillator crystals (12), wherein each crystal includes a plurality of sides and is laser etched on at least one crystal side to scatter light, and an array of photodetectors (18) optically coupled to array of scintillator crystals. The side of the crystal (12) is laser etched with a distinct pattern defined by a user using a computer aided design program. The detector (6) is part of a nuclear scanner (4) which includes a reconstruction processor (8) that reconstructs output signals from the photodetectors (18) into an image and a user interface (10) that displays the reconstructed image.