Patent ID: 7342232

Claim:
A method for use in positron emission tomography (PET) for digitizing radiation events, comprising: combining a group of analog voltage pulses generated by PET detectors to create fewer analog signals than the total number of analog voltage pulses in the group; digitizing the created analog signals; and analyzing the digitized signals to obtain a digitized voltage value of each individual analog voltage pulse in the group, wherein the digitizing is performed by ADCs and the analyzing further comprises: defining the group of analog voltage pulses as V 0 , V 1 , . . . , V n-1 , wherein n=1, 2, 4, . . . , 2 k and k<m−r, m and r being actual and required precision of the ADCs, respectively, and m>r; determining the created analog signals as V d1 =V s0 +V s1 + . . . +V s, n-1 , wherein V s,i =V i +i×2 r , and V d2 =V s0 +V s1 + . . . +V s, n-1 , wherein V s,i =V i +(n−1−i)×2 r ; determining a digital value of each individual analog voltage pulse V i by solving equations V d1 =V s0 +V s1 + . . . +V s, n-1 and V d2 =V s0 +V s1 + . . . +V s, n-1 ; and outputting the resulting digital value of each analog voltage pulse.