Patent 7129494 was granted and assigned to Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc. on October, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The present invention concerns very fast scintillator materials capable of resolving the position of an annihilation event within a portion of a human body cross-section. In one embodiment, the scintillator material comprises LaBr3 doped with cerium. Particular attention is drawn to LaBr3 doped with a quantity of Ce that is chosen for improving the timing properties, in particular the rise time and resultant timing resolution of the scintillator, and locational capabilities of the scintillator.