Harmanjeet Singh Bilkhu

arXiv2026

Roadmap Towards Quantum Entanglement Positron Emission Tomography (QE-PET)

Annihilation photons are quantum entangled in their polarization, a property that is not accessible in state-of-the-art clinical Positron Emission Tomography (PET). This roadmap describes the current status of research in the emerging field of quantum entanglement applications involving these photons for medical diagnosis. It outlines the underlying physics phenomena and the development of detector systems that can serve as a foundation for future Quantum Entanglement PET (QE-PET) scanners. These scanners will be capable of utilizing the entanglement between annihilation photons by measuring their Compton scattering on electrons. This roadmap comprises up-to-date experimental results on the study of quantum entanglement and the decoherence of annihilation photons, alongside the current theoretical understanding of these phenomena. The methods and detector technologies described herein are being developed (i) in order to enhance standard PET imaging by suppressing random coincidences in the reconstruction of annihilation site density distributions, (ii) in order to establish the degree of quantum entanglement as a diagnostic biomarker for tissue pathology and oxygenation, and (iii) in order to elaborate a method for pH imaging. Whether entanglement-based imaging and pH mapping can be successfully translated into clinical practice remains an open question and a subject of exciting ongoing research. This roadmap serves as an invitation to the scientific community to join this burgeoning field.

physics.med-ph↗

arXiv2025

Development of a Compton Imager Setup

Hard X-ray photons with energies in the range of hundreds of keV typically undergo Compton scattering when they are incident on a detector. In this process, an incident photon deposits a fraction of its energy at the point of incidence and continues onwards with a change in direction that depends on the amount of energy deposited. By using a pair of detectors to detect the point of incidence and the direction of the scattered photon, we can calculate the scattering direction and angle. The position of a source in the sky can be reconstructed using many Compton photon pairs from a source. We demonstrate this principle in the laboratory by using a pair of Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT) detectors sensitive in the energy range of 20-200 keV, similar to those used in $\textit{AstroSat}$/CZT Imager (CZTI). The laboratory setup consists of the two detectors placed perpendicular to each other in a lead-lined box. The detectors are read out by a custom-programmed Xilinx PYNQ-Z2 FPGA board, and data are then transferred to a personal computer (PC)}. There are two key updates from CZTI: the detectors are read concurrently rather than serially, and the time resolution has been improved from $20~μ$s to $7.5~μ$s. We irradiated the detectors with a collimated $^{133}\mathrm{Ba}$ source and identified Compton scattering events for the 356 keV line. We run a Compton reconstruction algorithm to correctly infer the location of the source in the detector frame, with a location-dependent angular response measure of $16°-30°$. This comprises a successful technology demonstration for a Compton imaging camera in the hard X-ray regime. We present the details of our setup, the data acquisition process, and software algorithms, and showcase our results. We also quantify the limitations of this setup and discuss ways of improving the performance in future experiments.

astro-ph.IM↗