A Data Acquisition, Event Processing and Coincidence Determination Module for a Distributed Parallel Processing Architecture for PET and SPECT Imaging

The QuickSilver Event Processing Module (EPM), an electronics module used in Siemens Inveon PET and SPECT systems, provides data acquisition, event processing and coincidence determination functions. Custom mixed-signal CMOS ASICs and high speed ADCs are utilized to provide the front-end analog portion of the data acquisition. A high performance FPGA provides the digital portion of the data acquisition running at 100 MHz, the subsequent event processing, and the coincidence determination. The high performance FPGA also provides multiple high speed serial data channels for external interconnection. This interconnection allows the module to be replicated as needed in a distributed parallel processing architecture to provide flexible, high performance, PET and SPECT imaging. The module also provides controllable high voltage needed to bias detectors. A 64 channel, LSO based PET system built using 16 EPMs yielded 1.22 ns FWHM system timing and better than 14% energy resolution.