Medipix3 CT for material sciences

Innovative detector systems for non-destructive material analysis and for medical diagnosis are an important development to improve the performance and the quality of examination methods. For a number of years now photon-counting X-ray detectors are being developed to process incoming X-ray photons as single events. These detectors facilitate a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) than conventional, non-photon-counting, scintillator based detector systems, which detect X-ray photons indirectly through conversion into visible light. The Medipix is a pixelated photon counting semiconductor detector which features adjustable energy thresholds allowing energy selective, multispectral X-ray imaging. The Medipix chip is under continued development by the ``Medipix2 Collaboration'' and ``Medipix3 Collaboration'' at CERN [1]. The Medipix electronic offers 256 × 256 pixels with a pixel pitch of 55 × 55 μm2 and can be hybridized with different sensor materials like Si, CdTe or GaAs. The newest member of the Medipix family is the Medipix3 (ASIC in 0.13 μm CMOS technology) providing up to eight separate 12-bit counters per pixel. It offers a couple of different working modes [2], which are useful for X-ray imaging applications. A Medipix3 CT X-ray measuring station was built up for small animal X-ray imaging and non-destructive material analysis [3]. The combination of the low energy threshold ( ~ 4 keV) of the Medipix3 with its multispectral capability enables tomographic investigations on objects with low absorption contrast. The advantage of photon counting, multispectral detectors like Medipix3 for material sciences will be presented here as well as a comparison with a scintillator based CT.