IKBFU Scientists Developed a New X-Ray Camera

There are many spheres that depend heavily on X-ray sources, and this technology is crucial for medicine, industry and security. It took 128 years for the X-ray technology to develop from Roentgen tube to “MegaScience” class plants.

Since X-rays are invisible to human eye, special equipment is required to properly depict the print taken with it, which leads to improving detecting systems in accordance with the development of new X-ray systems. The detecting systems have also come a long way from photographic tapes to semiconductor detectors for 2D X-ray imaging, capable of recording hundreds of high-resolutions pictures in a matter of seconds.

Alexey Astafyev, Researcher at the IKBFU Scientific Center “Coherent X-ray optics for MegaScience-class plants”:

Before the advent of modern digital image recording technology, the photographic method was used, i.e. when special films or plates with photosensitive emulsion applied to them were illuminated by radiation. This method allows specialists to obtain an image of the object under study, but it is virtually impossible to study the object in dynamics. The advent of digital recording devices based on semiconductor microelectronics made it possible to obtain an image of an object at a point in time, as well as to make a series of such images, viewing which, like a slide show, one can observe the object in dynamics.

Since creating a semiconductor matrix with small-sized pixels (under  1 micrometer) is a hardly achievable goal, scientists tend to use a scintillator crystal to make X-ray radiation visible, and then an optical system allows operators to adjust the crystal’s image. This solution was invented by Anatoly Snigirev and his ESRF colleagues in 1998 and has been used ever since.

The described approach formed the basis of a new device developed and tested by the staff of the Research Center — a working prototype of an X-ray detector. The high-speed detector created by the team allows not only to observe static images, but also to record the observed processes in dynamics, saving up to 20 frames per second. A similar speed is achieved through the use of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor structure technology.

The detector can be used to solve various problems: from the study of materials to the acquisition of images of living organisms. It is also worth noting the possibility of using a device for diagnosing X-ray optics and tuning any instruments, which is indispensable for modern sources, especially at fourth-generation synchrotrons. The detector can be used for X-ray microscopy, imaging, tomography, topography, interferometry, and high resolution diffraction.

Anatoly Snigirev, Director of the IKBFU Scientific Center “Coherent X-ray optics for MegaScience-class plants”:

In addition to the compound refractive lenses that have become traditional elements of X-ray optics at synchrotron source research stations, we presented: a compact X-ray transfocator, which is a lens of variable focal length, a device that allows to align the image background and obtain more complete information about the studied objects, and our new development — a high-resolution X-ray camera, the so-called "X-ray eye”