Time of flight measurements based on FPGA using a breast dedicated PET

In this work the implementation of a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) using a Nutt delay line FPGA-based and applied on a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) device is going to be presented in order to check the system's suitability for Time of Flight (TOE) measurements. In recent years, FPGAs ha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of instrumentation 2014-05, Vol.9 (5), p.C05012-C05012
Main Authors: Aguilar, A, García-Olcina, R, Martos, J, Soret, J, Torres, J, Benlloch, J M, González, A J, Sánchez, F
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Breast
Detectors
Devices
Field programmable gate arrays
Linearity
Positron emission
Time measurement
Tomography
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Summary:In this work the implementation of a Time-to-Digital Converter (TDC) using a Nutt delay line FPGA-based and applied on a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) device is going to be presented in order to check the system's suitability for Time of Flight (TOE) measurements. In recent years, FPGAs have shown great advantages for precise time measurements in PET. The architecture employed for these measurements is described in detail. The system developed was tested on a dedicated breast PET prototype, composed of LYSO crystals and Positive Sensitive Photomultipliers (PSPMTs). Two distinct experiments were carried out for this purpose. In the first test, system linearity was evaluated in order to calibrate the time measurements, providing a linearity error of less than 2% and an average time resolution of 1.4 ns FWHM. The second set of measurements tested system resolution, resulting in a FWHM as good as 1.35 ns. The results suggest that the coincidence window for the current PET can be reduced in order to minimize the random events and thus, achieve better image quality.
ISSN:1748-0221
1748-0221
DOI:10.1088/1748-0221/9/05/C05012