The aim of this study is to investigate the imaging performance of a silicon photomultiplier
array (ArraySL-4) photodetector for possible PET and potentially SPECT applications
using BGO and CsI(Na) pixellated scintillators. Our main objectives are: i) the comparison of the
ArraySL-4 to the older version SensL’s SPMArray4 photo detector in terms of energy resolution
and peak to valley ratio of a row profile in the flood image and ii) the study of the effect of different
coupling schemes using ultra transmitting glass windows of various thicknesses. We acquired raw
images from two pixellated scintillators (BGO with 2 2 5mm3 and CsI:Na with 1 1 5mm3
pixel sizes) irradiated with 511 keV and 1274.5 keV g-rays from a 22Na source. The SiPM array
detector allowed the clear visualization of the discrete 2 2mm2 pixellated BGO and 1 1mm2
CsI:Na scintillator elements at room temperature (no cooling). The energy resolution of the new
SensL ArraySL-4 detector for the 2 2 5mm3 BGO pixellated scintillator array is improved for
rather 6 percentage points (energy resolution improvement equal to 22%) and the peak to valley
ratio is measured higher for both scintillator arrays (for BGO 68% (1:7 ) and for CsI:Na 154%
(2:5 )) compared with SPMArray4. The clear identification of the 1 1mm2 CsI:Na scintillator
elements provides evidence that the combination of those SiPMs with even smaller arrays can be
used as an efficient imaging detector module. Optical coupling significantly improves image uniformity,
while the use of BK7 ultra transmitting glass window with 1.35mm thickness provided
the best measure energy resolution equal to 21.5%.