MeV X-ray imaging using plastic scintillating fiber area detectors: A simulation study

Due to their low cost, flexibility, and convenience for long distance data transfer, plastic scintillating fibers (PSFs) have been increasingly used in building detectors or sensors for detecting various radiations and imaging. In this work, the possibility of using PSF coupled with charge-coupled devices (CCD) to build area detectors for X-ray imaging is studied using a Monte Carlo simulation. The focus is on X-ray imaging with energy from a few 100 keV to about 20 MeV. It is found that the efficiency of PSF in detecting X-ray in this energy range is low. The performance can be improved by coating a PSF with X-ray absorption layers and the MTF of the system is presented. It seems possible to build such area detectors with PSFs for imaging hard X-rays under certain environment.