{"doi":"10.1088/1361-6560/ace2a9","title":"Simultaneous photon counting and charge integrating for pulse pile-up correction in paralyzable photon counting detectors","abstract":"Abstract Objective. In photon counting detectors (PCDs), electric pulses induced by two or more x-ray photons can pile up and result in count losses when their temporal separation is less than the detector dead time. The correction of pulse pile-up-induced count loss is particularly difficult for paralyzable PCDs since a given value of recorded counts can correspond to two different values of true photon interactions. In contrast, charge (energy) integrating detectors work by integrating collected electric charge induced by x-rays over time and do not suffer from pile-up losses. This work introduces an inexpensive readout circuit element to the circuits of PCDs to simultaneously collect time-integrated charge to correct pile-up-induced count losses. Approach. Prototype electronics were constructed to collect time-integrated charges simultaneously with photon counts. A splitter was used to feed the electric signal in parallel to both a digital counter and a charge integrator. After recording PCD counts and integrating collected charge, a lookup table can be generated to map raw counts in the total- and high-energy bins and total charge to estimate pile-up-free true counts. Proof-of-concept imaging experiments were performed with a CdTe-based PCD array to test this method. Main results. The proposed electronics successfully recorded photon counts and time-integrated charge simultaneously, and whereas photon counts exhibited paralyzable pulse pile-up, time-integrated charge using the same electric signal as the counts measurement was linear with x-ray flux. With the proposed correction, paralyzable PCD counts became linear with input flux for both total- and high-energy bins. At high flux levels, uncorrected post-log measurements of PMMA objects severely overestimated radiological path lengths for both energy bins. After the proposed correction, the non-monotonic measurements again became linear with flux and accurately represented the true radiological path lengths. No impact on the spatial resolution was observed after the proposed correction in images of a line-pair test pattern. Significance. Time-integrated charge can be used to correct for pulse pile-up in paralyzable PCDs where analytical solutions may be difficult to use, and integrated charge can be collected simultaneously with counts using inexpensive electronics.","journal":"Physics in Medicine and Biology","year":2023,"id":348010,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":11,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9588,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1089875,"name":"Jeff Radtke","orcid":"0000-0002-7633-9102","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":525576,"name":"Wesley S. Culberson","orcid":"0000-0003-4573-4406","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":267618,"name":"Ke Li","orcid":"0000-0002-2672-2672","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1089874,"name":"Kevin Treb","orcid":"0000-0003-4373-439X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":33,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:12:01.859977Z","pmid":"37379858","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}