A preliminary experimental validation of a new approach for pulse processing in PET

A new technique was previously proposed for digital processing of scintillation event pulses in PET. In this work, the proposed technique was validated by using experimentally measured voltage pulses generated in scintillation detection. The setup included a scintillator/PMT detector module containing a front layer of LSO crystals and a back layer of LYSO crystals, a high-voltage power supply, and a digital oscilloscope. At 5 GHz sampling rate, about 100 event pulses generated by Na-22 and Cs-137 point sources in front of the detector module were captured and recorded. Recorded pulses were post-processed on a PC by software that implemented the proposed pulse processing electronics. The technique performed reasonably well, as suggested by the accuracy of estimated rise time and the distinction of the two decay-time constants of the LSO and LYSO.