A small animal PET prototype based on Silicon Photomultipliers

Next generation PET scanners should fulfill very high requirements in terms of spatial, energy and timing resolution. Modern scanner performances are inherently limited by the use of standard photomultiplier tubes. The use of Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) matrices is proposed for the construction of a small animal PET system consisting of two detector heads based on LYSO continuous crystals. The use of large area multi-pixel Silicon Photomultiplier (SiPM) detectors requires the development of a multichannel Digital Acquisition system (DAQ) as well as of a dedicated front-end in order not to degrade the intrinsic detector capabilities. At the University of Pisa and INFN Pisa we developed a DAQ board for the read-out of 2 64-pixel SiPM matrices in time coincidence for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) applications. The proof of principle is based on 64-pixel detectors, but the whole system has been conceived to be easily scalable to a higher number of channels. Here we describe the Group-V INFN DASiPM2 (Development and Application of SiPM) project and related results.