An instantaneous photomultiplier gain calibration method for PET or gamma camera detectors using an LED network

Li, H.; Liu, Y.; Xing, Tao; Wang, Y.; Uribe, J.; Baghaei, H.; Xie, Shuping; Kim, S.; Ramirez, Rocio; Wong, Wai-Hoi

doi:10.1109/nssmic.2003.1352389

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…A high-speed amplifier was built in the divider. The amplifier can be shut down totally by a control signal that makes instantaneous PMT gain calibration possible [4]. Except the high voltage supply wires, there is a flat cable that includes the gain control, reference voltage, shutdown control, output signal, and power supply.…”

Section: Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

A gain-programmable transit-time-stable and temperature-stable PMT Voltage divider

Liu

Wang

et al. 2004

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

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A gain-programmable, transit-time-stable, temperature-stable photomultiplier (PMT) voltage divider design is described in this paper. The signal-to-noise ratio can be increased by changing a PMT gain directly instead of adjusting the gain of the preamplifier. PMT gain can be changed only by adjusting the voltages for the dynodes instead of changing the total high voltage between the anode and the photocathode, which can cause a significant signal transit-time variation that cannot be accepted by an application with a critical timing requirement, such as positron emission tomography (PET) or time-of-flight (TOF) detection/PET. The dynode voltage can be controlled by a digital analog converter isolated with a linear optocoupler. The optocoupler consists of an infrared light emission diode (LED) optically coupled with two phototransistors, and one is used in a servo feedback circuit to control the LED drive current for compensating temperature characteristics. The results showed that a six times gain range could be achieved; the gain drift was 0.5% over a 20 C temperature range; 250 ps transit-time variation was measured over the entire gain range. A compact print circuit board (PCB) for the voltage divider integrated with a fixed-gain preamplifier has been designed and constructed. It can save about $30 per PMT channel compared with a commercial PMT voltage divider along with a variable gain amplifier. The preamplifier can be totally disabled, therefore in a system with a large amount of PMTs, only one channel can be enabled for calibrating the PMT gain. This new PMT voltage divider design is being applied to our animal PET camera and TOF/PET research.

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Section: Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

A gain-programmable transit-time-stable and temperature-stable PMT Voltage divider

Liu

Wang

et al. 2004

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

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“…Hardware methods have also been studied like PMT-quadrant-sharing techniques [7] and also including LED's inside the scintillation camera to calibrate PMTs by groups [8] or directly calculating correction matrices at hardware level [9]. The reduction of photomultiplier groups by segmenting the crystal is also common design choice which reduces this problem [10] but not applicable to continuous crystals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heuristic Method for Photo-detectors Localization over Continuous Crystal Scintillation Cameras

Colmeiro

Verrastro

2018

JC&ST

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The construction process of large scintillation cameras with continuous crystals is a complex problem affected by multiple variables, from the physical construction of the scintillation crystal to the dispersion in the sensibility of photomultiplier tubes. The selection of these variables have a strong impact on the final performance of the scintillation camera. A new method to select photomultiplier is presented in this paper, regarding its gain, making use of k-means clustering and genetic algorithms. The proposed algorithm was tested and applied in the construction of six scintillation cameras for the Argentinean positron emission tomogaph prototype (AR-PET), a problem with more than 10 +600 possible configurations. The resulting configuration of the scintillation cameras reduced the software-freecalibration FWHM of the camera from 20% to 15% average.

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“…The RRPET uses a new instantaneous LED automatic PMT gain calibration method for better quality control; the gains of all 168 PMTs can be equalized within 1 minute [12]. The tuning is managed through a computer parallel port that includes the controls of each PMT gain, amplifier gains for weighted sum signals, analog trigger thresholds, and digital energy thresholds, as well as the front-end PMT gain calibration LEDs.…”

Section: A Overall Architecturementioning

confidence: 99%

Electronics design for a low-cost high-sensitivity rodent-research PET (RRPET)

Liu

Xing

et al.

2003 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium. Conference Record (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37515)

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We designed and implemented electronics for a low-cost high-sensitivity positron emission tomography camera for research involving rodents. To reduce cost and increase sensitivity, we used continuous full-ring photomultiplier tube (PMT) with quadrant sharing (PQS) detector design. In this prototype camera, 168 PMTs decode 144 scintillation detector blocks consisting of 9216 crystal elements. An Anger position matrix board weight sums the 144 detector blocks as eight individual gamma camera zones. The full-ring detector decoding is performed by eight fixed local zones. However, in the PMTquadrant-sharing design, every two adjacent zones share seven axial PMTs. A boundary processing technique has been developed for the PMT-quadrant-sharing detector blocks so that the decoding of the full-ring detector can be performed by individual zones. A high-yield-pileup-event-recovery decoding board, a module-based coincidence processing system and a data acquisition computer, which were originally developed for a whole-body PET, can still be used by this rodent PET camera. The camera needs only eight decoding boards, and each board decodes 18 detector blocks of one detector zone. The entire decoding electronics need only 24 ADCs and can handle about six million events/second of single-rate. A motherboard decodes the control commands from the data acquisition computer, performs the real-time boundary processing and distributes DC power signals to all the eight decoding boards. To further reduce the cost and size of the camera, we have developed a new compact PMT voltage divider with adjustable PMT gain that can be controlled by programming the dynode high voltages directly. The very front-end preamplifier is also integrated into this divider board to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. A new instantaneous light-emitting diode automatic PMT gain calibration method is also used in this camera for better quality control; the gains of 168 PMTs can be equalized within 1 minute.

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An instantaneous photomultiplier gain calibration method for PET or gamma camera detectors using an LED network

Cited by 9 publications

References 6 publications

A gain-programmable transit-time-stable and temperature-stable PMT Voltage divider

A gain-programmable transit-time-stable and temperature-stable PMT Voltage divider

Heuristic Method for Photo-detectors Localization over Continuous Crystal Scintillation Cameras

Electronics design for a low-cost high-sensitivity rodent-research PET (RRPET)

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