This allows production of larger area, rugged sensors. Furthermore,
the CsI(Tl) sensor is finely pixelated to achieve two important effects.
One, it increases the total surface area of the scintillator by five fold
(each three-dimensional pixel has five open surfaces),
allowing a conformal layer of the Gd2O3 converter, thus improving detection efficiency.
And second, it further limits the lateral spread of scintillation light,
improving image contrast. It has been shown previously that pixelation of CsI(Tl) scintillator screens
can improve the detective quantum efficiency (DQE) of an X-ray system by a significant amount as compared to
non-pixelated screens [20].