Assessment of multi-energy inter-pixel coincidence counters (MEICC) for photon counting detectors at the presence of both charge sharing and pulse pileup

The performance of photon counting detectors (PCDs) are limited by the spectral distortion caused by charge sharing and pulse pileup. Recently we have proposed a new detector design called MEICC for multi-energy inter-pixel coincidence counter. MEICC records the counting signals in the same way as the current PCDs, while also recording the energy-dependent cross-talk with neighboring pixels. The previous studies have shown that MEICC decreases the effect of charge sharing significantly. Building on the previous success, the aim of this study was to assess the performance of MEICC when the pulse pileup also causes spectral distortion (in addition to charge sharing). Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to compare the performance of MEICC, the current PCD, and two different versions of real-time charge sharing correction schemes. The study found that MEICC had the best performance when count rates were moderate or high.