FPGA and SoC Devices Applied to New Trends in Image/Video and Signal Processing Fields
Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and, recently, System on Chip (SoC) devices have been applied in different areas and fields for the past 20 years. [...]
Survey on FPGA Architecture and Recent Applications
Field Programmable Gate Array or FPGA is introduced in the year 1985 and it is getting popular day by day due to its properties like design to reuse and flexibility. As compared to microprocessor, FPGA have high performance and configurability. When compared with application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), FPGA reduces development time, non-recurrent engineering (NRE) costs. The unique property which differ it from ASIC is its reconfiguration. The recent trends in FPGA architecture are in the direction which reduces the gap between the ASIC and FPGA. This paper will discuss on the classification of FPGA based on their routing architecture and the recent trends in the field of Physics, computation, defense, space research, etc., which are focusing on betterment of the existing technology.
Analytical calculation of the lower bound on timing resolution for PET scintillation detectors comprising high-aspect-ratio crystal elements
Excellent timing resolution is required to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain available from the incorporation of time-of-flight (ToF) information in image reconstruction for positron emission tomography (PET). As the detector’s timing resolution improves, so does SNR, reconstructed image quality, and accuracy. This directly impacts the challenging detection and quantification tasks in the clinic. The recognition of these benefits has spurred efforts within the molecular imaging community to determine to what extent the timing resolution of scintillation detectors can be improved and develop near-term solutions for advancing ToF-PET. Presented in this work, is a method for calculating the Cramér–Rao lower bound (CRLB) on timing resolution for scintillation detectors with long crystal elements, where the influence of the variation in optical path length of scintillation light on achievable timing resolution is non-negligible. The presented formalism incorporates an accurate, analytical probability density function (PDF) of optical transit time within the crystal to obtain a purely mathematical expression of the CRLB with high-aspect-ratio (HAR) scintillation detectors. This approach enables the statistical limit on timing resolution performance to be analytically expressed for clinically-relevant PET scintillation detectors without requiring Monte Carlo simulation-generated photon transport time distributions. The analytically calculated optical transport PDF was compared with detailed light transport simulations, and excellent agreement was found between the two. The coincidence timing resolution (CTR) between two 3×3×20 ?> mm3 ?> LYSO:Ce crystals coupled to analogue SiPMs was experimentally measured to be 162±1 ?> ps FWHM, approaching the analytically calculated lower bound within 6.5%.