An event driven read-out system for a novel PET scanner with Compton enhanced 3-D gamma reconstruction

The design of a data acquisition system (DAQ) for a novel positron emission tomography (PET) scanner is reported. The PET system, based on long axially oriented scintillation crystals, readout by hybrid photon detectors (HPD), allows 3-D parallax-error free Compton enhanced gamma reconstruction. The DAQ system is composed of several readout cards, each one associated with a module of the PET scanner, and of a main card that controls the whole system. Using fast triggering signals from the silicon sensor back-planes, the main card performs the coincidence analysis and, in case of coincidence, it enables the readout of the two modules involved. The other modules are left free to perform new acquisitions. This concept based on several independent, event-driven and parallel readout chains, drastically reduces the acquisition dead time. Each enabled readout card digitizes, encodes and stores data from the associated module. Data are stored in a local FIFO and then are transferred through a network into a single computer. The system is designed according to the specifications of the IDEAS VaTaGP5 chip. Each readout card is able to accommodate all the chip readout modes and the test procedures and can be used as a standalone readout system that allows reading out up to 16 daisy chained chips per channel. The DAQ system here reported, designed for a two module demonstrator setup, was developed to study and optimize the essential design parameters.