Advanced Detector Design for Large Area, Ultra-Fast X-ray Imaging

High speed x-ray imaging is extremely important for several military and civilian applications such as imaging exploding land mines, high speed computed tomography for medical imaging, time resolved x-ray diffraction of biological systems, and drugdevelopment research. The advent of high flux, micro-focused, flash x-ray sources have now facilitated high-speed x-ray imaging in laboratory environments. However, these x-ray sources have not yet realized their full potential due to the lack of asuitable fast x-ray imaging system. Specifically, a lack of high-resolution detection systems with large active imaging areas and a microsecond time resolution is the major limiting factor in these important applications.To address these limitations wepropose to develop a novel x-ray imaging system based on a high resolution, high efficiency, fast decay time structured CsI scintillator, optically coupled to an advanced ultra-fast CCD. The proposed digital system will operate at 105 frames per second orgreater, with the effective dynamic range of 12 bits. The Phase I research will demonstrate the feasibility of the core technology and will provide a detailed plan for the Phase II system development.In addition to the army applications, the proposeddetector would find widespread use in instrumentation wherever high resolution and fast readout x-ray detectors are used. These include structural biology, microtomography of teeth and bones, polymer processing, x-ray astronomy, nondestructive testing,and basic physics research. High-resolution x-ray imaging detectors currently have a large commercial market, and as such, the proposed development holds a very high potential for commercialization.