System architecture for high speed reconstruction in time-of-flight positron tomography

A new generation of Time Of Flight (TOF) positron tomograph with high resolution and high count rate capabilities is under development in our group. After a short recall of the data acquisition process and image reconstruction in a TOF PET camera, we present the data acquisition system which achieves a data transfer rate of 0.8 mega events per second or more if necessary in list mode. We describe the reconstruction process based on a five stages pipe line architecture using home made processors. The expected performance with this architecture is a time reconstruction of six seconds per image (256x256 pixels) of one million events. This time could be reduce to 4 seconds. We conclude with the future developments of the system