Evaluation of a data acquisition system for SPECT (PET)

A fully digital data acquisition (D AQ) system for a cylindrical (NaI(Tl)) SPECT camera has been developed and tested. This system digitizes pulses of the scintillation events from the closest (7 or 5) PMTs to the interaction point. The digitized pulse waveforms are processed to obtain estimates of amplitude and time of arrival. The authors describe various processing methods based on both simulated and real data. The results obtained from a set of three neighboring PMTs using /sup 99m/Tc was 5.2 ns std. dev. in timing resolution, 12.6% energy resolution and the computing time per pulse about 7 /spl mu/s.