ASICs in PET: what we have and what we need

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Electronics Engineering
• Nuclear Instrumentation

Background:

• Designing positron emission tomography (PET) scanners presents challenges in signal timing, pulse integration, power consumption, and multi-channel readout.
• Application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) are custom electronics developed to meet these PET scanner design requirements.
• A lack of standardized comparisons for existing ASIC solutions in PET applications hinders selection and development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the requirements for readout electronics in PET scanners.
• To provide an overview and comparison of key ASICs used in PET applications.
• To propose a standardized protocol for assessing ASIC performance in PET.

Main Methods:

• Reviewing hardware characteristics of PET ASICs, including channel count, power consumption, and I/O design.
• Summarizing ASIC performance parameters as reported in existing literature.
• Analyzing trends in ASIC development over the past two decades.

Main Results:

• PET ASICs show trends toward lower power consumption and increased channel counts.
• Significant variations exist in ASIC characteristics and performance assessments across different vendors.
• A protocol is proposed to standardize ASIC performance evaluation for PET applications.

Conclusions:

• ASICs for PET applications are diverse and evolving.
• Increasing demands for timing resolution and data rates are driven by advances in scintillator and photosensor technology.
• This review offers a needed overview of PET readout solutions over the last 20 years, addressing a gap in current literature.