Design of a monolithic multichannel front-end readout ASIC for PET imaging based on scintillation crystals read out by photodetectors at both ends

This paper presents the design techniques of a monolithic multichannel front-end readout chip integrated with both high-accuracy TDC and high-resolution ADC for the PET using LYSO(Ce) crystals read out by MCP PMT at both ends. In the front-end readout chain, a regulated cascade (RGC) preamplifier is employed in every channel for amplifying the current signals generated from MCP detector. A gain-adjustment stage, an integrator and a pulse shaper are employed for pulse height analysis which changes the width of the pulses. A discriminator is placed after the preamplifier to generate triggers. These triggers are sent to a sub-nanosecond TDC for measurement and digitizing. The peak values of the shaped pulses are digitized by a multichannel time-based ADC for measurement. Three prototype chips are designed in AMS 0.35 μm CMOS technology. In the front-end readout prototype chip, the dynamic range, the linearity, and the power dissipation are optimized. The input dynamic range from few fC to more than 100 pC can be achieved. The analog output range of the front-end readout circuits is from 1.2 V to 3.2 V. The shaping time is 280 ns and the power dissipation is reduced to less than 15 mW. In the TDC chip based on a DLL array, the RMS jitter and the peak-to-peak jitter of the used DLL are reduced to 7 ps and 21 ps, respectively. The bin size of the TDC has been reduced to 71ps with a reference clock of 100 MHz. In the multichannel time-based ADC chip, a maximum resolution of 12 bits, a sampling rate of ~1 MS/s, and the power dissipation of 3 mW ° 0.2 mW/channel are achieved.