Method to improve the time resolution of digital silicon photomultipliers

摘要

A radiation detector module for use in a time-of-flight positron emission tomography (TOF-PET) scanner generates a trigger signal indicative of a detected radiation event. A timing circuit including a first time-to-digital converter (TDC) and a second TDC is configured to output a corrected timestamp for the detected radiation event based on a first timestamp determined by the first TDC and a second timestamp determined by the second TDC. The first TDC is synchronized to a first reference clock signal and the second TDC is synchronized to a second reference clock signal, the first and second reference clock signals being asynchronous.