Photomultiplier tubes, also called phototubes in the past, are operating with a very high incorporated gain as well as a reasonable quantum efficiency. This type of light detector with incorporated electron multiplier are used in detectors of nuclear medical imaging systems such as scintialltion cameras (also called gamma camera) and positron emission tomography (also called PET). Such devices are also used in many industrial applications requiring low light level sensors such as Scintillation counting, oil well logging, drum scanner, biomedical technologies, fluorescence Lifetime, measurement system, semiconductor processing and failure Analysis.

Many scientific fields also require this type of detectors such as high energy physics, nuclear and neutron physics, neutrino physics, telescopes. In some cases where a large number of channels is needed as well as compacity, multichannel, multianode or multipixel photomultiplier tubes are used.

Many different accessories are also available such as magnetic shield cases, sockets, voltage dividers. Photosensor modules, PMT assemblies or packages are also available. They can include different different electronic functions and processing electronics associated with the PMTs such as power supplies, photon counting, amplifiers .