Scalable electronic readout design for a 100 ps coincidence time resolution TOF-PET system

We have developed a scalable detector readout design for a 100 ps coincidence time resolution (CTR) time of flight (TOF) positron emission tomography (PET) detector technology. The basic scintillation detectors studied in this paper are based on 2 x 4 arrays of 3 x 3 x 10 mm(3) 'fast-LGSO:Ce' scintillation crystals side-coupled to 6 x 4 arrays of 3 x 3 mm(2) silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs). We employed a novel mixed-signal front-end electronic configuration and a low timing jitter Field Programming Gate Array-based time to digital converter for data acquisition. Using a Na-22 point source, >10 000 coincidence events were experimentally acquired for several SiPM bias voltages, leading edge time-pickoff thresholds, and timing channels. CTR of 102.03 +/- 1.9 ps full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) was achieved using single 3 x 3 x 10 mm(3) 'fast-LGSO' crystal elements, wrapped in Teflon tape and side coupled to a linear array of 3 SiPMs. In addition, the measured average CTR was 113.4 +/- 0.7 ps for the side-coupled 2 x 4 crystal array. The readout architecture presented in this work is designed to be scalable to large area module detectors with a goal to create the first TOF-PET system with 100 ps FWHM CTR.

Automated summary

A scalable detector readout design was developed for a 100 ps coincidence time resolution (CTR) time of flight (TOF) PET detector using 'fast-LGSO:Ce' scintillation crystals and SiPMs. Experimental results demonstrated a CTR of 102.03 +/- 1.9 ps achieved with single crystal elements and 113.4 +/- 0.7 ps with crystal arrays. The goal is to create the first TOF-PET system with 100 ps FWHM CTR using the presented readout architecture.