Investigation of Cadmium Zinc Telluride based system as a room temperature planar imager for plant functional imaging

The development of plant based renewable sources of energy will greatly benefit from the development of a dedicated radionuclide SPECT imager. This will facilitate the elucidation of plant physiology geared towards optimizing the development of suitable biofuel feedstocks. Our efforts have focused on the development of a room temperature based gamma SPECT whole plant imager to enable functional imaging investigations. We report on the evaluation of a Redlen CZT planar imager system that successfully detected the presence of trace amounts (<;1μCi) of a 125-I labeled CmPP16-1 bioprobe that was introduced to plant leaves via carbon nano-fiber chip delivery. This establishes a basis for continued investigation of CZT based sensor technology for the development of a room temperature based, dedicated whole plant gamma SPECT imager.