Digital Time Alignment of High Resolution PET Inveon Block Detectors

Time alignment is critical to the operation of high performance PET systems. Optimizing the countrate performance of a given system requires proper timing to minimize the effects of random events as early in the datastream as possible to reduce electronic deadtime. Siemens Inveon PET systems high countrate performance is made possible by their exceedingly tight timing tolerance of 1.22 ns FWHM, allowing the use of an optimal 3.5 ns coincidence window. This paper describes the hardware capabilities used to align the system as well as the processing techniques used to perform the alignment.