Development of an ASIC for APD-based small animal PET

Woodring, Mitchell L.; Christian, James F.; Shah, K.S.; Squillante, Michael R.; Kogan, Alex; Cherry, Simon R.; Shao, Yiping; Augustine, F.L.

doi:10.1109/nssmic.2001.1009664

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…In concert with other efforts to develop an ASIC for LSO-APD-based PET detectors [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9], we are developing an ASIC as part of a small animal PET system. Some of the unique features of our ASIC include the ability to process signals of either positive or negative polarity, an on-chip, "winner-takeall" multiplexer, and an input for processing the coincident trigger from other detectors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Application-Specific Integrated Circuit for Positron Emission Tomography

Christian

Dokhale

Lawrence

et al.

IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2005

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Improving the performance of positron-emission tomography (PET) systems for small animal imaging requires the use of high-speed detectors, such as a Lutetium Oxyorthosilicate (LSO) crystal coupled to avalanche photodiodes (APDs). We have developed an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for reading out the multiple channels of an LSO-APD detector module for use in a small animal PET system.In this work, we characterize the performance of the ASIC, referred to as the AE172 chip. The AE172 can accommodate both positive and negative input signals, with a programmable conversion gain that ranges from 2.8 mV/fC to 21 mV/fC. The ASIC channels exhibit a linear response and an equivalent noise charge (ENC) of ~2000 electrons, RMS. The timing jitter depends on the amplitude of the input signal; and is less than 1 ns for test signals greater than 100,000 electrons.Connecting the ASIC to a linear APD detector reduces the relative readout noise to 26 electrons referenced to the input of the APD, which is operated at a gain of ~200. An LSO-APD-ASIC detector achieves an energy resolution of 13% for the 511 keV annihilation photons from a 22 Na source, and a coincident timing resolution of ~13 ns.

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