Design and performance of an acquisition and control system for a positron camera with novel detectors

A Sun-based data acquisition and control (DAQ) system has been designed for PETRRA, a whole-body positron camera using novel large-area detectors. The DAQ system uses a high-speed digital I/O card (S16D) installed on the SBus of a SPARC10 and a specially-designed Positron Camera Interface (PCI), which also controls the gantry and horizontal couch motion. Data in the form of different types of B-byte packets are acquired in list mode. Tests with a signal generator show that the DAQ system should be able to accommodate coincidence count-rates up to 100 kcps. The predicted count loss due to the DAQ system is /spl sim/13% at this count rate, provided asynchronous-read based software is used. The list-mode data acquisition system designed for PETRRA could be adapted for other 3D PET cameras with similar data rates, including dual-headed gamma cameras operating in coincidence mode.