- Where do I buy the OpenPET hardware?
OpenPET uses a custom Support Crate that is similar to a VME crate, which should be purchased through Elma: support crate chassis, part number 12V12XXX78N2VCGX-LBL, http://www.elma.com/en/us/.
You can purchase all of the custom OpenPET printed circuit boards through Terasic at http://www.openpet.terasic.com
You also need the following additional components:
- 1 host PC with a Windows 7 operating system
- 1 QuickUSB module purchased from Bitwise Systems: part number QUSB2, http://www.bitwisesys.com/qusb2-p/qusb2.htm
- 1 standard USB cable
- 1 USB-Blaster cable from Terasic or Digi-Key: part number P0302-ND, http://www.digikey.com/product-highlights/us/en/terasic-usb-blaster-cable/3718
See the OpenPET User’s Guide, section 2 for further details.
- How many OpenPET crates and detector boards do I need for my system?
Go to the OpenPET User’s Guide, section 1 for a system overview, which includes examples to help you determine the size of your system as defined by OpenPET.
- What software do I need and how do I download it?
Go to the OpenPET User’s Guide, section 2.3 for detailed instructions on how to download all necessary software and firmware.
- Are there any data analysis tools available yet?
The OpenPET Control and Analysis Tools (OpenPET CAT) is an optional package that is currently available. It is a data acquisition and analysis framework for the OpenPET electronics based on the ROOT framework. Go to the OpenPET User’s Guide, section 6 for further details.
If you don’t want to use OpenPET CAT with ROOT, you can use the two basic executables that we have provided to setup and run the OpenPET system and then analyze the data offline with your own code. Go to the OpenPET User’s Guide, sections 2.4-2.5 for further details.
In the future, a GUI will be developed to further facilitate data analysis.
- What types of data are currently being pushed to the host PC during data acquisition?
Each signal event has TDC and ADC data. The TDC data comes right after the ADC data. See the OpenPET User’s Guide, section 2.5 for further details.
Currently there are no status words, but we plan to add these in future versions of the code.
- The data is transferred in blocks so that the first byte of the output is not necessarily a starting word 1 of an oscilloscope mode word. Is this normal?
You need to run the command to clear the system FIFO before you collect data. If you run opet_cmd_usb 0x2209, 0x4000, 0x00F0F0F0, 200, 0, the first word of oscilloscope mode data will always be starting word 1.
See the OpenPET User’s Guide, sections 2.4-2.5 and 5 for further details.
- Will OpenPET work for time-of-flight PET? What is the timing resolution?
Currently the timing resolution of version 1.0 is 2.5 ns, but we plan to dramatically improve the timing resolution to be sufficient for time-of-flight PET.
See the Release Notes for further details.