Advances in Radiation-Based Medical Imaging Detectors and Systems

Modern medical imaging is a cornerstone of precision diagnostics and personalized therapy, giving clinicians the information they need to make confident decisions and improving patient outcomes and quality of life. Behind every advance in image quality, dose reduction, or acquisition speed sits a detector, a readout chain, and the physics that drives them.

This Research Topic focuses on the R&D of detectors, instrumentation, and techniques for ionizing-radiation-based medical imaging - including X-ray, gamma, and neutron modalities. A good fraction of the progress in this field originates from groups rooted in high-energy and nuclear physics, who translate detector concepts developed for fundamental research into clinically relevant imaging systems. We welcome contributions from these communities as well as from medical physicists, electronics engineers, and computational scientists working at the interface.

Recent years have seen rapid progress on multiple fronts. Fast, low-noise front-end electronics now make it possible to count and measure the energy of individual X-ray photons, enabling spectral imaging, improved contrast, noise rejection, and significant dose reduction. New scintillators, semiconductor gamma detectors, and single-photon sensors have pushed nuclear imaging toward better spatial and temporal resolution, higher contrast, and shorter acquisition times. Hybrid architectures and tightly integrated detector–electronics systems are opening new design spaces, while advances in computing allow detailed modeling and simulation that shortens R&D cycles and de-risks complex designs. Timely diffusion and affordability of new advanced diagnosis systems will strongly depend on the advancements made and the information shared within this community, which will find here the ideal context.

We invite original research, methods papers, reviews, and perspectives covering - but not limited to - the following areas:

o Single-photon-counting and spectral X-ray imaging systems
o Positron Emission Tomography (PET), including time-of-flight and total-body PET
o Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT)
o Compton cameras and prompt-gamma imaging
o Neutron detection for medical imaging applications
o BNCT
o Hybrid and multimodal imaging architectures (e.g., PET/MR, PET/CT detector integration)
o Novel scintillators, semiconductor detectors, and photodetectors for medical use
o Front-end electronics, ASICs, and data-acquisition systems tailored to medical imaging
o Detector concepts for image-guided radiotherapy and hadron therapy
o Computational modeling, Monte Carlo simulation, and digital-twin approaches for detector and system design
o AI- and ML-assisted reconstruction, calibration, and detector characterization

Both experimental work - including detector and system development, characterization, and clinical translation - and computational studies are within scope. We particularly encourage contributions that bridge the detector-physics and medical-imaging communities, and that demonstrate clear pathways from instrumentation advances to clinical or pre-clinical impact.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Original Research
• Perspective
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: single-photon-counting, spectral CT, positron emission tomography, SPECT, radiation detectors, medical imaging ASICs, Compton camera, Monte Carlo simulation, hadron therapy, image reconstruction AI

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.