Patent ID: 6947585

Claim:
A device for on-line correction of patient motion in three-dimensional positron emission tomography wherein a positron emission tomograph device is used to collect coincidence event and position data, said device comprising: a first digital pipeline latch for receiving said data collected by said positron emission tomograph device; a plurality of multipliers disposed in parallel, each of said plurality of multipliers for receiving and multiplying a portion of said data to generate a product simultaneous with each other of said plurality of multipliers; a second digital pipeline latch for simultaneously receiving said product from each of said plurality of multipliers; a plurality of adders disposed in parallel, each of said plurality of adders for receiving and summing a plurality of said product from said plurality of multipliers; and a third digital pipeline latch for receiving data from said plurality of adders, said data being representative of a pair of transformed coordinate points from a primary coordinate system to a secondary coordinate system; wherein said plurality of multipliers and said plurality of adders are provided to produce transformed coordinates from said primary coordinate system to said secondary coordinate system for each of a pair of detectors using the equations: x a ′=d xx *x a +d xy *y a +d xz *z a +X; (1) y a ′=d yx *x a +d yy *y a +d yz *z a +Y; (2) z a ′=d zx *x a +d zy *y a +d zz *z a +Z; (3) x b ′=d xx *x b +d xy *y b +d xz *z b +X; (4) y b ′=d yx *x b +d yy *y b +d yz *z b +Y; and (5) z b ′=d zx *x b +d zy *y b +d zz *z b +Z; (6) where: X, Y, and Z are translational offsets from a point (x, y, z) in said primary coordinate system to a point (x′, y′, z′) in said secondary coordinate system; d xx , d xy , and d xz are direction cosines between the x-, y-, and z-axes and the x′ axis, respectively; d yx , d yy , and d yz are direction cosines between the x-, y-, and z-axes and the y′ axis, respectively; d zx , d zy , and d zz are direction cosines between the x-, y-, and z-axes and the z′ axis, respectively; and a and b are two detectors in a detector pair; whereby as said data is input to said first digital pipeline latch, said product of said data from an immediately previous said event is input to said second digital pipeline latch and completely transformed data from a second immediately previous said data is input to said third digital pipeline latch, and whereby said event data is transformed from said primary coordinate system to said secondary coordinate system in real time.