A simple all-digital PET system

Positron emission tomography (PET) systems employ mixed-signal front-end to carry out relatively simple, and ad hoc, processing of the charge pulses generated upon event detection. To obtain, and maintain over time, proper calibrations of the mixed-signal circuitry for generating accurate event information is a challenging task due to the simplicity of the event processing, and the huge number of channels and multiplexing of the input signals found in modern PET systems. It is also difficult to modify or extend the event-processing technologies when needs arise because it would involve making changes to the circuitry. These limitations can be circumvented by applying digital signal-processing technologies for analyzing event pulses generated in PET. With digital technologies, optimized event-processing algorithms can be implemented and they can be modified or extended with ease when needed. The resulting PET data-acquisition (DAQ) system is easier to calibrate and maintain, can generate more accurate event information, and has better extendibility. In this paper, we present our work toward developing a scalable all-digital DAQ system for PET, built upon a personal-computer platform for reducing cost. We will present the overall architecture of this digital DAQ system, and describe our implementations of several components of the system.