Processing of the Signal Obtained from X-Ray Fluorescence Emissions to Estimate Localization in Biomedical Applications

X-ray fluorescence detection has been widely used in recent years in computed tomography due to its ability to non-destructively acquire structural and elemental information from samples. In this paper, we present a complete irradiation and image reconstruction system based on a linear spatial configuration of cadmium telluride detectors. This configuration is used to analyze the energy spectra detected in a phantom model, which was scanned by Monte Carlo simulation to examine the K series of the emission lines of Au nanoparticles (GNPs). The phantom used in our study has a cylindrical shape with a diameter of 60 mm and a height of 100 mm. It is filled with a material equivalent to water and tissue and contains five embedded cylinders, with concentrations of 1% down to 0.1% GNP. To simulate the irradiation process, we use the PENELOPE Monte Carlo technique tool in conjunction with a 150 kV monoenergetic source. A previously characterized cadmium telluride detector model was used and reconstructed with two widely used techniques in the environment to evaluate the complete system. The results obtained from our study demonstrate that the proposed detector configuration together with the proposed irradiation simulation system produces measurable and viable signals, comparable with other studies carried out, which would allow the effective application of various complex image reconstruction techniques.