PSEC.UCHICAGO.EDU

A group of us from The University of Chicago, Argonne, Fermilab and Berkeley are interested in the development of large-area systems to measure the time-of-arrival of relativistic particles with (ultimately) 1 pico-second resolution, and for signals typical of Positron-Emission Tomography (PET), a resolution of 30 pico-seconds (sigma on one channel). These are respectively a factor of 100 and 20 better than the present state-of-the-art. This would involve development in a number of intellectually challenging areas: three-dimensional modeling of photo-optical devices, the design and construction of fast, economical, low-power electronics, the `end-to-end' (i.e. complete) simulation of large systems, real-time image processing and reconstruction, and the optimization of large detector and analysis systems for medical imaging. In each of these areas there is immense room for creative and innovative thinking, as the underlying technologies have moved faster than the applications. We..