PETLINK™ Stream Buffer: Using an FPGA-based RAID controller with solid-state drives to achieve lossless, high count-rate 64-bit coincidence event acquisition for 3-D PET

A cost-effective method for simultaneous real-time acquisition, processing and storage of raw 64-bit detector pair packets for 3-D PET has remained an elusive goal. Bus bandwidths, coupled with the complexity of the rebinning calculations, have limited the count rates at which lossless data collection and processing could be performed. Online rebinning has been the method of choice for processing raw detector pair packets; however, high-count rate applications such as Rubidium 3-D PET studies can saturate current online rebinning technology. In addition, some rebinning algorithms push the capacity of the Siemens´ online rebinner (PDR) to process the incoming packets in real-time. The Stream Buffer architecture has recently been proposed as a solution to the current challenges of processing 3-D PET event packets. This architecture has now been realized with the development of the PETLINK™ Stream Buffer (PSB) card and advances in solid state drive (SSD) technology. This article presents the design and implementation of the PSB as well as considerations in using SSDs for high-count-rate data acquisition.