New embedded digital front-end for high resolution PET scanner

Author

Guerra, P. ; Espinosa, J. ; Ortuno, J.E. ; Kontaxakis, G. ; Vaquero, J.J. ; Desco, M. ; Santos, A.

Author_Institution

ETSI Telecomunicacion, Univ. Politecnica de Madrid, Spain

Volume

53

Issue

3

fYear

2006

fDate

6/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

770

Lastpage

775

Abstract

This work describes a new digital front-end for a high-resolution low-cost animal PET scanner which is currently under development. The advances in flexibility and size of modern FPGAs together with the release of new tools enable the integration of most of the front-end electronics in a single FPGA. The implemented system includes a small 32-bit RISC processor, several peripherals attached to the internal buses and a special DSP unit closely attached to the processor which is dedicated to the detection of the gamma events. On top of these, a small footprint real time operating system abstracts the underlying hardware, providing the mechanisms to combine on-chip slow control and data streaming.

Keywords

field programmable gate arrays; gamma-ray detection; high energy physics instrumentation computing; nuclear electronics; positron emission tomography; real-time systems; signal processing; RISC processor; data streaming; digital front end electronics; digital signal processing unit; field programmable gate arrays; gamma event detection; high resolution positron emission tomography scanner; internal buses; real time operating system architectures; slow control mechanism; Animals; Digital signal processing; Event detection; Field programmable gate arrays; Gamma ray detection; Gamma ray detectors; Operating systems; Positron emission tomography; Real time systems; Reduced instruction set computing; Digital front-end electronics; high resolution positron emission tomography; real time system architectures;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNS.2006.874800

Filename

1644940