Advances in front-end readout ASIC design for PET imaging

This paper presents the advances in design techniques of front-end ASICs for PET imaging applications. The Overview of PET front-end electronics and their features are firstly given. Secondly, the survey of the front-end ASICs dedicated to different kinds of photodetectors, signal acquisitions and imaging strategies is presented. Thirdly, the trends in the design of front-end ASICs are described. The front-end readout and analog signal processing will be replaced by digital methods via a imaging specific DSP. For the future developments, the design of front-end ASIC will focus on the one-chip solution of front-end readout circuits, high-speed digitizers and DSPs. Both hardware techniques and software skills should be employed for the front-end microelectronics system design.