The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 06, 2016
Filed:
Nov. 18, 2013
Petsys—medical Pet Imaging Systems, S.a., Oeiras, PT;
Manuel Dionísio Da Rocha Rolo, Lisbon, PT;
Ricardo Alexandre Marques Bogalho, Lisbon, PT;
Joáo Manuel Coelho Dos Santos Varela, Lisbon, PT;
Angelo Rivetti, Turin, IT;
Manuel Dionísio Da Rocha Rolo, Lisbon, PT;
Ricardo Alexandre Marques Bogalho, Lisbon, PT;
PETSYS—MEDICAL PET IMAGING SYSTEMS, S.A., Oeiras, PT;
Abstract
This invention is about a readout apparatus and method for time-of-flight and energy measurements with silicon photomultipliers (SIPM) coupled to a scintillator. The timing measurement can be as accurate as 50 ps or below, after calibration. The energy is measured using a time-over-threshold technique, and the energy resolution is only constrained by the scintillation statistics. In order to achieve low power of 10 mW per channel, a low impedance input amplifier and analog time-to-digital converters (TDCs) based on time interpolation are used. The readout circuit can be triggered by a single photoelectron (p.e.) with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) above 20 dB. The said readout circuit operates with SiPMs of different gain, polarity and matrix size. The preferred embodiment of the readout apparatus is a multi-channel application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) with 64 channels.