A data acquisition system for a Ring Compton-scatter Camera

A data acquisition system for a Ring Compton scatter Camera (RCC) has been developed. The RCC is composed of two detector arrays. A personal computer is used for storing the detector energy data and controlling the Compton camera. The camera output interface uses a pipelined hardware architecture to reduce the counting losses due to the finite data transfer time, and to provide variable length data records to the computer. Data transfers are controlled by either hardware or software generated interrupts. The acquisition modes include: the collection of coincident spectra, delayed coincident counting curves, and pulse height spectra from the individual detectors. Diagnostic procedures have also been developed. The software supports all of the hardware functions, and provides routines for preprocessing and displaying the acquired data