Preliminary test results on the new electronic readout of the YAP-(S)PET small animal scanner

A small animal PET-SPECT scanner (YAP-(S)PET) prototype was built at the Physics Department of the University of Ferrara and is presently being used at the Nuclear Medicine Department for radiopharmaceutical studies on rats. The first YAP-(S)PET prototype shows very good performances, but needs some improvements before it can be used for intensive radiopharmaceutical research. The main problem of the actual prototype is its heavy electronics, based on NIM and CAMAC standard modules. For this reason a new, compact readout electronics was developed and tested. The results of a first series of tests made on the first prototype will be presented in this paper.