Small animal positron emission tomography using a dual head prototype based on PSPMTs and FPGA readout

The purpose of this article is to present the system architecture, as well as, initial performance results from a low cost PET system specially designed for small animal planar imaging. This PET camera was designed and assembled from the ldquoDetector and Imaging Grouprdquo of the ldquoThomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, USA, in collaboration with the Medical Instruments dep. of Technological Educational institute of Athens. This system is the first working small PET prototype in Greece. Currently is used for pharmacokinetic studies in the Institute of Radioisotopes-Radiodiagnostic Products, N.C.S.R. Demokritos. The system high performance is archived by using the very fast LSO crystal, the Hamamatsu H8500 PSPMTs, fast amplification electronics, an FPGA system and USB 2 data transfer protocol. The image reconstruction is performed with JAVA in the Kmax environment.