Direct Measurement of Ionization Charges in Single-phase Liquid Xenon Compton Telescope for 3γ Medical Imaging

We report the study of direct measurement of ionization charges in an innovative liquid xenon Compton camera of small animal imaging, named XEMIS2. It was combined with a novel 3γ medical imaging modality, showing a "TOF-like" PET performance, targeted to reduce the administered activity diametrically while preserving the image quality in oncology diagnosis. For the Compton cones reconstruction, the sequential low energy electronic recoils from Compton scattering of third γ-ray (~1 MeV) are measured directly from ionization signals under a high electric field of 2 kV/cm. The Geant4/NEST simulations studies reveal that the intrinsic energy and spatial resolutions of charges carriers measuring in liquid xenon are dominated respectively by the electron-ion recombination and the abstruse trajectory of recoil electrons. Besides, a novel ASIC front-end electronic, XTRACT, and data acquisition chain were developed, dedicated to optimizing the accuracy and efficiency of ionization signals measurement in XEMIS2. It allows a continuous read-out with ultra-low charges threshold and negligible dead-time per individual channel. The performing characteristics were calibrated in the prototype XEMIS1 under the XEMIS2 operation condition, showing a good homogeneous charge linearity response. Meanwhile, the data processing and analysis were developed, where the charge measurement has been optimized through Monte Carlo simulations.