Some Signal Processing Aspects of Time-of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography (TOFPET) System Implementation

The implementation of data acquisition and real-time backprojection via a bit-slice microprocessor system places serious constraints on data format in TOF-PET systems. To minimize hardware costs and complexity and enhance processing speed, internal data representation is to be realized with a minimum number of bits without significant loss of accuracy. Specifically, we have examined in detail data formats necessary for the quantization of the TOF data and reconstruction filtering via integer FFT's. Estimates of data degradation as related to number of bits utilized have been obtained. It is shown that a significant reduction in image memory size and improvement in speed of computation can be achieved with the appropriate choice of data formats and algorithms.