An edge-on charge-transfer design for energy-resolved x-ray detection

As an x-ray beam goes through the human body, it will collect important information via interaction with tissues. Since this interaction is energy-sensitive, the state-of-the-art spectral CT technologies provide higher quality images of biological tissues with x-ray energy information (or spectral information). With existing energy-integrating technologies, a large fraction of energy information is ignored in the x-ray detection process. Although the recently proposed photon-counting technology promises to achieve higher image quality at a lower radiation dose, it suffers from limitations in counting rate, performance uniformity, and fabrication cost. In this paper, we focus on an alternative approach to resolve the energy distribution of transmitted x-ray photons. First, we analyze the x-ray attenuation in a silicon substrate and describe a linear approximation model for x-ray detection. Then, we design an edge-on architecture based on the proposed energy-resolving model. In our design, the x-ray-photon-induced charges are transferred sequentially resembling the working process of a CCD camera. Finally, we numerically evaluate the linear approximation of x-ray attenuation and derive the energy distribution of x-ray photons. Our simulation results show that the proposed energy-sensing approach is feasible and has the potential to complement the photon-counting technology.