A data acquisition and Event Processing Module for small animal SPECT imaging

The Quicksilver event processing module (EPM) designed for the Siemens Inveon Dedicated PET (Positron Emission Tomography) preclinical scanner, has been leveraged in the development of a new SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) EPM module. This new module is used in Inveon SPECT systems and provides 16 channels of high speed data acquisition and event processing functions. Fifteen of these channels are used for processing 7 X signals, 7 Y signals and a SUM signal all received from the SPECT detector electronics. 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 and the subsequent event processing. This FPGA also provides multiple high speed serial data channels for external interconnection. These interconnections allow the module to be replicated as needed in a distributed parallel processing architecture for flexible, high performance SPECT imaging. The module also provides controllable high voltage needed to bias the SPECT detectors. A four head Nal(Tl) based SPECT system is currently being built using one SPECT EPM per SPECT head.