OpenPET General Purpose Readout Electronics for Radionuclide Imaging

OpenPET is:

• Electronics. It is a system consisting of circuit boards, firmware, and software for people who are building prototype PET and SPECT imagers.

• High Performance. The timing resolution, spatial resolution, energy resolution, and throughput will be limited by your detectors, not the electronics.

• Flexible. Will support virtually any kind of detector, camera configuration, and event word definition.

• Scalable. Supports anywhere from a single detector to thousands of detectors.

• Modifiable. Extensive use is made of FPGAs, so changes can generally made via software (rather than making new circuit boards).

• Open Source. Source code for the firmware and software, as well as the schematics for the circuit boards, are publicly available.

• User Friendly. Our goal is to make it easy for you to use these electronics for your camera. Documentation and instructions will be provided, and we hope to develop a user community that will share both code and expertise.

• A Collaboration. These electronics are jointly developed by LBNL and SensL.

• Just Beginning. We have a preliminary specification now, and hope to have the first boards by December 2009.

• In Need of YOUR Input. We want comments and suggestions on our specification from potential users and we want to make sure that OpenPET will work for YOU. Please email your comments to openpet@lbl.gov.

• 13 October 2010: There will be an OpenPET Users Group Meeting at the upcoming 2010 IEEE NSS/MIC Conference. The meeting will be held in Room 200C of the Knoxville Convention Center beginning at 4:00 pm on Thursday, November 4th.

• 13 October 2010: A new version of the specification has been posted.