TY  - JOUR
A1  - Streun, M.
A1  - Brandenburg, G.
A1  - Larue, H.
A1  - Parl, C.
A1  - Ziemons, Karl
T1  - The data acquisition system of ClearPET neuro - a small animal PET scanner
JF  - IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science
N2  - The Crystal Clear Collaboration has developed a modular system for a small animal PET scanner (ClearPET). The modularity allows the assembly of scanners of different sizes and characteristics in order to satisfy the specific needs of the individual member institutions. The system performs depth of interaction detection by using a phoswich arrangement combining LSO and LuYAP scintillators which are coupled to Multichannel Photomultipliers (PMTs). For each PMT a free running 40 MHz ADC digitizes the signal and the complete scintillation pulse is sampled by an FPGA and sent with 20 MB/s to a PC for preprocessing. The pulse provides information about the gamma energy and the scintillator material which identifies the interaction layer. Furthermore, the exact pulse starting time is obtained from the sampled data. This is important as no hardware coincidence detection is implemented. All single events are recorded and coincidences are identified by software. The system in Jülich (ClearPET Neuro) is equipped with 10240 crystals on 80 PMTs. The paper will present an overview of the data acquisition system.
Y1  - 2006
SN  - 0018-9499
VL  - 53
IS  - 3
SP  - 700
EP  - 703
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Streun, M.
A1  - Brandenburg, G.
A1  - Larue, H.
A1  - Zimmermann, E.
A1  - Ziemons, Karl
A1  - Halling, H.
T1  - Pulse recording by free-running sampling
JF  - 2000 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, Vol. 2
N2  - Pulses from a position-sensitive photomultiplier (PS-PMT) are recorded by free running ADCs at a sampling rate of 40 MHz. A four-channel acquisition-board has been developed which is equipped with four 12 bit-ADCs connected to one FPGA (field programmable gate array). The FPGA manages data acquisition and the transfer to the host computer. It can also work as a digital trigger, so a separate hardware-trigger can be omitted. The method of free running sampling provides a maximum of information, besides the pulse charge and amplitude also pulse shape and starting time are contained in the sampled data. These informations are crucial for many tasks such as distinguishing between different scintillator materials, determination of radiation type, pile-up recovery, coincidence detection or time-of-flight applications. The absence of an analog integrator allows coping with very high count rates. Since this method is going to be employed in positron emission tomography (PET), the position of an event is another important information. The simultaneous readout of four channels allows localization by means of center-of-gravity weighting. First results from a test setup with LSO-scintillators coupled to the PS-PMT are presented
Y1  - 2000
SN  - 1082-3654
SP  - 9/179
EP  - 9/181
ER  -