LabPET II scanner performances improvement: Thermal stability control based on FPGA

Abstract

The LabPET II detection module serves as the fundamental component within Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners designed for achieving ultra-high-resolution imaging of small to medium-sized animals as well as the human brain. To ensure peak performance, it is imperative that this module operates consistently at a stable temperature. In this paper, we present an automatic and real-time method to improve the thermal control of the scanner LabPET II by evacuating the heat to reduce the overall temperature and maintain the thermal stability of the system. Based on the Thermo-Electric Cooler (TEC) process, our method applies two numerical techniques, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Heat Transfer Analysis (HTA). The Dirichlet Boundary Conditions (DBC) method is applied for the Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) at 25∘ C. The real measurements confirm and validate the simulation results with the Finite Element Method (FEM) based on the software COMSOL Multiphysics™. Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation on the Development and Education (DE1) board is performed with comparative results study. The proposed method is both simple and practical, and ensures thermal stability at 35∘C for the duration of operation of the scanner, which has a complex structure.

Keywords

• Application-specific integrated circuit
• Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
• Field-programmable gate array (FPGA)
• Finite element method (FEM)
• Positron emission tomography (PET)
• Thermo-electric cooler (TEC)