Abstract: The use of the most advanced technology in medical imaging results in the development of high performance detectors that can significantly improve the performance of the medical devices employed in hospitals. Scintillator crystals coupled to photodetectors remain to be essential detectors in terms of performance and cost for medical imaging applications in different imaging modalities. Recent advances in photodetectors result in an increase of the performance of the medical scanners. Solid state detectors can provide substantial performance improvement, but are more complex to integrate into clinical detectors due mainly to their higher cost. Solid state photodetectors (APDs, SiPMs) have made new detector concepts possible and have led to improvements in different imaging modalities. Recent advances in detectors for medical imaging are revised.

Abstract: We study the (B) over bar (0)(s) -> D-s(-)(KD)(+) weak decay, and look at the KD invariant mass distribution, for which we use recent lattice QCD results for the KDinteraction from where the D-s0*(2317) resonance appears as a KD bound state. Since there are not yet experimental data on this reaction, in a second step we propose an analysis method to obtain information on the D-s0* (2317) resonance from the future experimental KD mass distribution in this decay. For this purpose, we generate synthetic data taking a few points from our theoretical distribution, to which we add a 5% or 10% error. With this analysis method, we prove that one can obtain from these “data” the existence of a bound KD state, the KD scattering length and effective range, and most importantly, the KD probability in the wave function of the bound state obtained, which was found to be largely dominant in lattice QCD studies. This means that one can obtain information on the nature of the D-s0*(+) (2317) resonance from the implementation of this experiment, in the line of finding the structure of resonances, which is one of the main aims in hadron spectroscopy.

Abstract: The “Neutrino Experiment with a Xenon Time-Projection Chamber” (NEXT) is intended to investigate the neutrinoless double beta decay of Xe-136, which requires a severe suppression of potential backgrounds; therefore, an extensive screening and selection process is underway to control the radiopurity levels of the materials to be used in the experimental set-up of NEXT. The detector design combines the measurement of the topological signature of the event for background discrimination with the energy resolution optimization. Separate energy and tracking readout planes are based on different sensors: photomultiplier tubes for calorimetry and silicon multi-pixel photon counters for tracking. The design of a radiopure tracking plane, in direct contact with the gas detector medium, was specially challenging since the needed components like printed circuit boards, connectors, sensors or capacitors have typically, according to available information in databases and in the literature, activities too large for experiments requiring ultra-low background conditions. Here, the radiopurity assessment of tracking readout components based on gamma-ray spectroscopy using ultra-low background germanium detectors at the Laboratorio Subterraneo de Canfranc (Spain) is described. According to the obtained results, radiopure enough printed circuit boards made of kapton and copper, silicon photomultipliers and other required components, fulfilling the requirement of an overall background level in the region of interest of at most 8 x 10(-4) counts keV(-1) kg(-1) y(-1), have been identified.