A flexible, extensible, high-speed architecture, called QuickSilver TM and specifically geared to the requirements of small animal imaging, has been developed. The architecture is composed of ring-based event processing modules (EPMs) with nearest neighbor, high-speed digital communication transmitting event packets via a "store and forward" concept. Each EPM is capable of transmitting up to 15.6M events/sec to other EPMs. Coincidence determination is performed at the EPM level around the "ring". This distributes the load and eliminates the need for a separate coincidence processor. Each EPM is capable of transmitting up to 1.9M coincidence events/sec to an event routing subsystem (ERS) for acquisition and processing. The ERS has 2 transport interfaces for acquiring events: an IEEE 1394A interface and a PCI interface. The IEEE 1394A interface can support up to 5.3M events/sec and the PCI interface can support up to 16.7M events/sec. Thus this architecture provides a new level of capability for small animal PET imaging, but is also extremely well suited for PET research, single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging, and use with X-ray CT and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

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