Deep Learning-Based Classification of Gamma Photon Interactions in Room-Temperature Semiconductor Radiation Detectors

Photon counting radiation detectors have become an integral part of medical imaging modalities such as Positron Emission Tomography or Computed Tomography. One of the most promising detectors is the wide bandgap room temperature semiconductor detectors, which depends on the interaction gamma/x-ray photons with the detector material involves Compton scattering which leads to multiple interaction photon events (MIPEs) of a single photon. For semiconductor detectors like CdZnTeSe (CZTS), which have a high overlap of detected energies between Compton and photoelectric events, it is nearly impossible to distinguish between Compton scattered events from photoelectric events using conventional readout electronics or signal processing algorithms. Herein, we report a deep learning classifier CoPhNet that distinguishes between Compton scattering and photoelectric interactions of gamma/x-ray photons with CdZnTeSe (CZTS) semiconductor detectors. Our CoPhNet model was trained using simulated data to resemble actual CZTS detector pulses and validated using both simulated and experimental data. These results demonstrated that our CoPhNet model can achieve high classification accuracy over the simulated test set. It also holds its performance robustness under operating parameter shifts such as Signal-Noise-Ratio (SNR) and incident energy. Our work thus laid solid foundation for developing next-generation high energy gamma-rays detectors for better biomedical imaging.