CAMAC Applications in Nuclear Medicine at Vanderbilt: Present Status and Future Plans

CAMAC has been used for data acquisition and control of nuclear measurement systems in the Vanderbilt University Nuclear Medicine Laboratory for approximately two years. The implementation of the CAMAC crate controller used with a PDP/9 computer is described. Data are acquired from three types of devices. These include a stationary multi-probe system, a computer driven scanner and a dual probe scanner not under computer control. Future extensions of our system are discussed, including the collection of data from higher data rate instruments (Anger-type scintillation camera) as well as computer networking. The CAMAC system required a higher initial dollar investment when compared to a single dedicated scanner interface. However, it provided a much more versatile and more easily expanded system. When a second device is added, we found that the use of CAMAC can be defended successfully on a cost basis alone. The CAMAC standard allows the replication of systems by laboratories without the large investments in time and money usually needed to interface specialized measurement systems to computers. The modularity permits orderly growth of systems and protects against obsolescence. Almost any standard would be better than no standard, and we plan to use CAMAC for all applications where data-transmission-rate requirements permit. We hope that users in the nonnuclear field will come to utilize CAMAC in their measurement and data reduction systems where similar benefits should be obtained.