Althought most of the ALEM funding is provided by the US government, VC or private funding is most welcome. Especially ALEM is in need of some exit policy to turn its developed and proprietary technologies into value and help ALEM with the strenuous process of commercialization.

ALEM's technologies are concentrated around the use of ceramics, rather than single crystals, primarily for medical imaging applications. There are a number of reasons why ceramics are preferred, such as lower cost, lower temperature fabrication, wider and better control of composition, control of shape without machining etc. Other than the long standing tradition of ceramic development at General Electric, ALEM does not see much competition. The following are specific areas of development:

Transparent optical ceramic (TOC:Eu), containing europium first developed by ALEM, not patented because it appears in the claims of a GE patent, but never reduced to practice. Funded by NIH. Main field of application is digital x-ray imaging. Presently developed towards sensors for dental diagnostics, with typical dimensions of 3 x 2 x 0.02 cm³. Advanced conversations with Trophy, largest manufacturer of dental imaging, who expressed interest in purchasing or licensing technology, when methods of mass fabrication are solved. This work is in progress. Second type of development, funded by Livermore National Laboratories is a detector (25 x 25 x 0.2 cm³) for nuclear maintenance program. TOC objects of these dimensions have never been made. We are at least 2 years from reaching that goal. Manufacturing technology developed under this program would immediately open the mammography market, for which the properties of TOC are ideal.

TOC:Eu for CT applications. The TOC of the previous paragraph is not directly applicable to CT, because of the temporal aspects of its emission. Recent work (funded by NIH) has resulted in a material whose characteristic are within a factor of 2 of the currently used cadmium tungstate. A year ago we were approached by a large manufacturer of medical and security machines, who wanted a proprietary replacement for Cd tungstate. They were considering building a factory capable of producing 4 metric tons of the scintillator material per year. At that time another material than the TOC was under consideration, in our opinion, not ready for mass production and the deal fell through. Again the Livermore development will be immensely useful in the solution of this problem.

LSO ceramic. In the form of single crystals, LSO is the only material used in Positron Emission Tomography (PET). It is produced by only one company in the US (CTI), and available only for non commercial use. A ceramic version (funded by NIH) would make it widely available, for CT applications at reduced cost. A preliminary patent application has been filed by ALEM. It is expected development will take some 18 months.

Afterglow free cesium iodide. CsI is one of the most efficient scintillators and very widely used in medical applications (mammography, dentistry). Its principal drawback is the presence of afterglow, which precludes high speed applications. Under a recent joint program with RMD inc., funded by NIH, the effects of afterglow have been reduced by a factor of 10. What is of particular importance is that RMD has a significant facility for commercial production of CsI. A change of composition required by the improved CsI is simple and would not result in a significant increase of cost. A jointly owned patent application is presently in the works.

Completely new materials. In that category is a possible TOC:Ce, based on cerium hafnate, funded by NIH. If successful it could be a direct ceramic replacement for LSO. Another material development, just to be submitted to NIH is a novel high speed, neutron detection scintillator, completely free of afterglow and therefore a superior replacement for ZnS:Ag. The new material would be offered as a translucent ceramic having nearly crystalline density.