Applications of high speed digitizer systems in nuclear medicine imaging applications

正电子发射断层扫描（PET）成像是临床上重要的医学成像方式 癌症和神经退行性疾病的诊断和分期。下一代PET的开发 成像系统需要可扩展的高性能数据采集系统 从PET系统中使用的闪烁探测器，并实时处理它们，以减少数据， 简洁明了的形式。PET成像系统的性能和图像质量直接关系到PET成像系统的性能 数据采集的质量。努塔克公司魁北克市政府在创新方面有着良好的记录， 数字信号处理硬件和软件系统的发展，最近已经开始看到他们的 数据采集系统用于PET成像应用。Nutaq已将PET成像领域确定为 具有潜在增长潜力的领域，并已提议与Goertzen博士位于马尼托巴大学的PET合作 研究小组，以扩大其公司在PET数据采集系统领域的存在。这个目标 合作将是开发一套PET特定的数据采集固件和软件工具， Nutaq硬件平台，允许新的最终用户从普通PET探测器快速获取初始数据 的设计.这些工具将用于广泛表征Nutaq平台的性能， 以确定未来的发展方向。最后，固件和工具将打包成教程 包针对新用户。我们预计，开发这个教程包将增强的经验， 通过最大限度地减少捕获其初始PET数据所需的时间， 概念验证数据集。此外，对系统性能的深入评估将有助于确定 硬件方面的改进，以供今后修改设计。这些结果将导致Nutaq拥有一个 增强了在PET数据采集领域的存在感。

Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging is an important medical imaging modality in the clinical diagnosis and staging of cancer and neurodegenerative conditions. Development of next generation PET imaging systems requires scalable and high performance data acquisition systems to capture the signals coming from the scintillation detectors used in the PET system and process them in real-time to reduce the data to a simple and concise form. The performance and image quality of PET imaging system is directly related to the quality of this data capture. Nutaq Inc. of Quebec City has an established track record on innovation in the development of digital signal processing hardware and software systems and has recently begun to see their data acquisition systems used in PET imaging applications. Nutaq has identified the field of PET imaging as an area of potential growth and has proposed to work with Dr. Goertzen's University of Manitoba based PET research group to expand their company presence in the area of PET data acquisition systems. The goal of this collaboration will be to develop a set of PET specific data acquisition firmware and software tools for the Nutaq hardware platform that allows new end users to rapidly acquire initial data from common PET detector designs. These tools will then be used to extensively characterize the performance of the Nutaq platform in order to define future development directions. Finally, the firmware and tools will be packaged into a tutorial package aimed at new users. We anticipate that developing this tutorial package will enhance the experience of future users of the Nutaq systems for PET data capture by minimizing the time required to capture their initial proof-of-concept data sets. In addition, the in-depth assessment of the system performance will allow defining areas of hardware improvement for future design revisions. These outcomes will lead to Nutaq having an enhanced presence in the field of PET data acquisition.