A new promising new choice for modern medical CT scanners: Cerium-doped gadolinium yttrium gallium aluminum garnet ceramic scintillator

Cerium-doped gadolinium yttrium gallium aluminum garnet (GYGAG) ceramics show great promise as scintillators for modern medical CT scanners. They exhibit exceptional scintillation efficiency, fast decay, low afterglow, and high X-ray stopping power. However, the performance of GYGAG ceramic scintillators in modern medical CT scanners has not been thoroughly investigated, as previous research has primarily focused on optimizing material performance. To address this research gap, we prepared a high-quality GYGAG ceramic scintillator and compared its performance to that of a widely used commercial GOS ceramic scintillator in medical CT scanners. The GYGAG scintillator showed comparable afterglow intensity, but significantly higher light yields and faster scintillation decay. Additionally, we developed two-dimensional GYGAG scintillator arrays integrated into a CT detector and assessed their spatial resolution and low-contrast detectability. The successful acquisition of CT images of an adult head phantom demonstrates the promising potential of GYGAG ceramic scintillators as alternatives for modern medical CT scanner detectors.