ULTRA-FAST TIMING AND THE APPLICATION OF HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS TECHNOLOGIES TO BIOMEDICAL IMAGING

We propose to apply the ultra fast Time Of Flight technique (TOF) developed for High Energy Physics (HEP) particle detectors to biomedical imaging. The similarity of the problem in the two fields as well as the remarkable opportunities in biomedical imaging to use technologies developed in HEP have the potential to make major advances in the medical world, in particular for Positron Emission Tomography (PET). We will describe and present some preliminary results of the development of a new complete read-out chain able to manage signals from various types of modem photo detectors (MCP, APD, SiPM). This innovative architecture is made of a fast front-end electronics ASIC with novel Digital Signal Processing (DSP) concepts able to reach the Pico-second timing resolution, a time-to-digital converter, a pipelined digital readout and an integrated trigger/filter with real-time data treatment and display. In parallel with the hardware development, we have begun a systematic program to simulate system characteristics from the initial particle interaction to the final digital data, including a bit-by-bit mapping of the front end/data acquisition system. The introduction of these techniques and tools, common in HEP, has the potential to make improvement to biomedical imaging systems.