ADVANCED PET DATA ACQUISITION WITH REAL-TIME CORRECTIONS

AN ADVANCED PET DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM IS PLANNED THAT TAKES ADVANTAGE OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN REAL-TIME SOFTWARE, INTEGRATED CIRCUITS, AND CPU DESIGN TO INCREASE PATIENT THROUGHPUT AND TO IMPROVE IMAGE QUALITY AND QUANTITATION. SHIFTING SINOGRAM CORRECTIONS FROM POSTACQUISTION SOFTWARE TO REAL-TIME HARDWARE WILL ALLOW THE CORRECTION OF EVENT DATA ON AN EVENT-BY-EVENT BASIS BEFORE THEY ARE LUMPED TOGETHER IN SINOGRAM SLICES, THEREBY IMPROVING IMAGE QUALITY, REDUCING IMAGE RECONSTRUCTION TIME,AND MAKING FEASIBLE THE ACQUISITION OF PROSPECTIVELY GATED MULTIFRAME IMAGES. THIS WILL ALLOW THE PHYSICIAN TO MAKE A FASTER ASSESSMENT OF IMAGE QUALITY AND INCREASE PATIENT THROUGHPUT. ON-LINE MEASUREMENT AND CORRECTION FOR DETECTOR DEAD-TIME LOSSES ALONG WITH SIMULTANEOUS GENERATION OF COINCIDENT AND ANTICOINCIDENT SINOGRAMS FOR RANDOM EVENT CORRECTION WILL EFFECTIVELY LINEARIZE THE COUNT RATE PERFORMANCE OF THE PET AND IMPROVE IMAGE QUANTITATION. THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATING INTERFACE WILL BE MORE SIMPLE DUE TO THE USE OF REAL-TIME, EXECUTIVE-MANAGED SYSTEM HARDWARE INTEGRATED WITH A MODERN UNIX WORKSTATION-BASED ENVIRONMENT IN PLACE OF A UNIX-BASED DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM LOOSELY COUPLED TO A DEC/VAX MINICOMPUTER. THE USER WILL BE PRESENTED WITH A ROBUST, SEAMLESS ENVIRONMENT WITH NO APPARENT SPLIT BETWEEN THE TWO SYSTEMS.