Author :
Hegyesi, G. ; Imrek, J. ; Kalinka, G. ; Molnár, J. ; Novak, D. ; Végh, J. ; Balkay, L. ; Emri, L. Balkay M ; Kis, S.A. ; Molnár, G. ; Trón, L. ; Valastyán, I. ; Bagaméry, I. ; Bükki, T. ; Rózsa, S. ; Szabó, Z. ; Kerek, A.
Abstract :
We report on the design of a small animal PET scanner being developed at our institutes. The existing setup is the first version of the miniPET machine consisting of four detector modules. Each detector module consists of an 8times8 LSO scintillator crystal block, a position sensitive photomultiplier, a digitizer including a digital signal processing board and an Ethernet interface board. There is no hardware coincidence detection implemented in the system and coincidence is determined based on a time stamp attached to every event by a digital CFD algorithm. The algorithm is implemented in the digital signal processing board and generates a time stamp with a coincidence resolution of less than 2 ns. The data acquisition system is based on Ethernet network and is highly scalable in size and performance
Keywords :
data acquisition; field programmable gate arrays; local area networks; medical signal processing; photomultipliers; position sensitive particle detectors; positron emission tomography; signal processing; solid scintillation detectors; Ethernet based distributed data acquisition system; Ethernet interface board; Ethernet network; FPGA; LSO scintillator crystal block; detector modules; digital CFD algorithm; digital Constant Fraction Discrimination algorithm; digital signal processing board; digitizer; hardware coincidence detection; miniPET machine; position sensitive photomultiplier; positron emission tomography; small animal PET scanner; time stamp; Animals; Data acquisition; Digital signal processing; Ethernet networks; Event detection; Hardware; Photomultipliers; Position sensitive particle detectors; Positron emission tomography; Signal processing algorithms; Ethernet-based data acquisition; FPGA; LSO; free running pulse sampling; positron emission tomography;
