Photon-Counting Detectors in Computed Tomography: A Review

Photon-counting computed tomography (CT) is a new technique that has the potential to revolutionize clinical CT and is predicted to be the next significant advancement. In recent years, tremendous research has been conducted to demonstrate the developments in hardware assembly and its working principles. The articles in this review were obtained by conducting a search of the MEDLINE database. Photon-counting detectors (PCDs) provide excellent quality diagnostic images with high spatial resolution, reduced noise, artifacts, increased contrast-to-noise ratio, and multienergy data acquisition as compared with conventionally used energy-integrating detector (EID). The search covered articles published between 2011 and 2021. The title and abstract of each article were reviewed as determined by the search strategy. From these, eligible studies and articles that provided the working and clinical application of PCDs were selected. This article aims to provide a systematic review of the basic working principles of PCDs, emphasize the uses and clinical applications of PCDs, and compare it to EIDs. It provides a nonmathematical explanation and understanding of photon-counting CT systems for radiologists as well as clinicians.