TY - JOUR A1 - Streun, M. A1 - Brandenburg, G. A1 - Khodaverdi, M. A1 - Larue, H. A1 - Parl, C. A1 - Ziemons, Karl T1 - Timemark correction for the ClearPET™ scanners JF - 2005 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, Vol. 4 N2 - The small animal PET scanners developed by the Crystal Clear Collaboration (ClearPETtrade) detect coincidences by analyzing timemarks which are attached to each event. The scanners are able to save complete single list mode data which allows analysis and modification of the timemarks after data acquisition. The timemarks are obtained from the digitally sampled detector pulses by calculating the baseline crossing of the rising edge of the pulse which is approximated as a straight line. But the limited sampling frequency causes a systematic error in the determination of the timemark. This error depends on the phase of the sampling clock at the time of the event. A statistical method that corrects these errors will be presented Y1 - 2006 SN - 1082-3654 SP - 2057 EP - 2060 ER - 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 - Ziemons, Karl A1 - Auffray, E. A1 - Barbier, R. A1 - Brandenburg, G. A1 - Bruyndonckx, P. T1 - The ClearPET™ project: Development of a 2nd generation high-performance small animal PET scanner JF - Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment N2 - Second generation high-performance PET scanners, called ClearPET™1, have been developed by working groups of the Crystal Clear Collaboration (CCC). High sensitivity and high spatial resolution for the ClearPET camera is achieved by using a phoswich arrangement combining two different types of lutetium-based scintillator materials: LSO from CTI and LuYAP:Ce from the CCC (ISTC project). In a first ClearPET prototype, phoswich arrangements of 8×8 crystals of 2×2×10 mm3 are coupled to multi-channel photomultiplier tubes (Hamamatsu R7600). A unit of four PMTs arranged in-line represents one of 20 sectors of the ring design. The opening diameter of the ring is 120 mm, the axial detector length is 110 mm.The PMT pulses are digitized by free-running ADCs and digital data processing determines the gamma energy, the phoswich layer and even the exact pulse starting time, which is subsequently used for coincidence detection. The gantry allows rotation of the detector modules around the field of view. Preliminary data shows a correct identification of the crystal layer about (98±1)%. Typically the energy resolution is (23.3±0.5)% for the luyap layer and (15.4±0.4)% for the lso layer. early studies showed the timing resolution of 2 ns FWHM and 4.8 ns FWTM. the intrinsic spatial resolution ranges from 1.37 mm to 1.61 mm full-width of half-maximum (FWHM) with a mean of 1.48 mm FWHM. further improvements in image and energy resolution are expected when the system geometry is fully modeled. Y1 - 2005 SN - 0168-9002 N1 - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Inorganic Scintillators and their Use in Scientific and Industrial Applications VL - 537 IS - 1-2 SP - 307 EP - 311 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ziemons, Karl A1 - Auffray, E. A1 - Barbier, R. A1 - Brandenburg, G. T1 - The ClearPET TM LSO/LuYAP phoswich scanner: a high performance small animal PET system JF - 2003 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, Vol. 3 N2 - A 2nd generation high performance small animal PET scanner, called ClearPET™, has been designed and a first prototype is built by working groups of the Crystal Clear Collaboration (CCC). In order to achieve high sensitivity and maintain good uniform spatial resolution over the field of view in high resolution PET systems, it is necessary to extract the depth of interaction (DOI) information and correct for spatial degradation. The design of the first ClearPET™ Demonstrator based on the use of the multi-anode photomultiplier tube (Hamamatsu R7600-M64) and a LSO/LuYAP phoswich matrix. The two crystal layers of 8*8 crystals (2*2*10 mm3) are stacked on each other and mounted without light guide as one to one on the PMT. A unit of four PMTs arranged in-line represents one of 20 sectors of the ring design. The opening diameter of the crystal ring is 137 mm, the axial detector length is 110 mm. The PMT pulses are digitized by free-running ADCs and digital data processing determines the gamma energy, the phoswich layer and even the pulse arrival time. Single gamma interactions are recorded and coincidences are found by software. The gantry allows rotation of the detector modules around the field of view. The measurements have been done using the first LSO/LuYAP detector cassettes. Y1 - 2004 SN - 1082-3654 SP - 1728 EP - 1732 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Streun, M. A1 - Brandenburg, G. A1 - Brökel, M. A1 - Fuss, L. A1 - Larue, H. A1 - Parl, C. A1 - Zimmermann, E. A1 - Ziemons, Karl A1 - Halling, H. T1 - The ClearPET data acquisition JF - 2003 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, Vol. 5 N2 - Within the Crystal Clear Collaboration a modular system for a small animal PET scanner (ClearPET™) has been developed. The modularity allows the assembly of scanners of different sizes and characteristics in order to fit the specific needs of the individual member institutions. Now a first demonstrator is being completed in Julich. The system performs depth of interaction detection by using a phoswich arrangement combining LSO and LuYAP scintillators which are coupled to multi-channel photomultipliers (PMTs). A free-running ADC digitizes the signal from the PMT and the complete scintillation pulses are 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. An advantage of that is that the coincidence window and the dimensions of the field of view can be adjusted easily. The ClearPET™ demonstrator is equipped with 10240 crystals on 80 PMTs. This paper presents an overview of the data acquisition system. Y1 - 2004 SN - 1082-3654 SP - 3097 EP - 3100 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Streun, M. A1 - Brandenburg, G. A1 - Larue, H. A1 - Saleh, H. A1 - Zimmermann, E. A1 - Ziemons, Karl A1 - Halling, H. T1 - Pulse shape discrimination of LSO and LuYAP scintillators for depth of interaction detection in PET JF - 2002 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, Vol. 3 N2 - A feasible way to gain the depth of interaction information in a PET scanner is the use of phoswich detectors. In general the layer of interaction is identified front the pulse shape of the corresponding scintillator material. In this work pulses from LSO and LuYAP crystals were investigated in order to find a practical method of distinguishing. It turned out that such a pulse processing could he kept simple due to an additional slow component in the light decay of the LuYAP pulse. At the same time the short decay time guarantees that the major amount of the light output is still collected within a short pulse recording time. Y1 - 2003 SN - 1082-3654 SP - 1636 EP - 1639 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Streun, M. A1 - Brandenburg, G. A1 - Larue, H. A1 - Saleh, H. A1 - Zimmermann, E. A1 - Ziemons, Karl A1 - Halling, H. T1 - Pulse shape discrimination of LSO and LuYAP scintillators for depth of interaction detection in PET JF - IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science N2 - A feasible way to gain the depth of interaction information in a positron emission tomography scanner is the use of phoswich detectors. In general, the layer of interaction is identified from the pulse shape of the corresponding scintillator material. In this work, pulses from LSO and LuYAP crystals were investigated in order to find a practical method of distinguishing. It turned out that such a pulse processing could be kept simple because of an additional slow component in the light decay of the LuYAP pulse. At the same time, the short decay time guarantees that the major amount of the light output is still collected within a short pulse recording time. Y1 - 2003 SN - 0018-9499 VL - 50 IS - 3 SP - 344 EP - 347 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 - 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 - IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 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 field programmable gate array (FPGA). 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. This information is 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 very high count rates to be dealt with. Since this method is to be employed in positron emission tomography (PET), the position of an event is also important. 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 here Y1 - 2001 SN - 0018-9499 VL - 48 IS - 3 SP - 524 EP - 526 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Streun, M. A1 - Brandenburg, G. A1 - Larue, H. A1 - Zimmermann, E. A1 - Ziemons, Karl A1 - Halling, H. T1 - Coincidence detection by digital processing of free-running sampled pulses JF - Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment N2 - Coincident events in two scintillator crystals coupled to photomultipliers (PMT) are detected by processing just the digital data of the recorded pulses. For this purpose the signals from both PMTs are continuously sampled by free-running ADCs at a sampling rate of 40 MHz. For each sampled pulse the starting time is determined by processing the pulse data. Even a fairly simple interpolating algorithm results in a FWHM of about 2 ns. Y1 - 2002 SN - 0168-9002 VL - 487 IS - 3 SP - 530 EP - 534 ER -