A distributed software system for acquisition and processing of data from six on-line gammacameras

The hardware of the distributed six-camera system described is built around three minicomputer CPU's, that are connected in a network by 16-bit duplex channels of 0.5 MHz word transfer rate. All hardware is commercially firmware. The distributed software has been created on the basis of firmware real-time executive operating systems, and is dedicated to the application. The system acquires is protocol selectable mode from up to six gammacameras simultaneously, with a maximum total list mode count rate of 0.16 MHz (limited by steady state disc transfer rate). After implementation of microprocessor driven camera-interfaces, the maximum hist mode count rate will be 0.5 MHz per camera. The acquisition software is supervisor structured and includes protocol generation and fast dynamic database management. At every camera location there is an interactive device by which the technicians enter commands an patient-id's through a protocol-oriented query language. Nearly all routine studies are pseudo real-time postprocessed automatically, while preprocessed research studies are sent to the analysis supervisor to be interactively analyzed