A compact and portable X-ray beam position monitor using Medipix3

The present work reports on the design and implementation of a novel portable X-ray beam diagnostics (XBPM) device. The device is transparent to the X-ray beam and provides real-time measurements of beam position, intensity, and size. The measurement principle is based on a pinhole camera which reco...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of instrumentation 2014-12, Vol.9 (12), p.C12036-C12036
Main Authors: Rico-Alvarez, O., Kachatkou, A., Marchal, J., Willis, B., Sawhney, K., Tartoni, N., Silfhout, R.G. van
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Beams (radiation)
Data compression
Devices
Diagnostic systems
Field programmable gate arrays
Focal plane
Sensors
X-rays
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Summary:The present work reports on the design and implementation of a novel portable X-ray beam diagnostics (XBPM) device. The device is transparent to the X-ray beam and provides real-time measurements of beam position, intensity, and size. The measurement principle is based on a pinhole camera which records scattered radiation from a Kapton foil which is placed in the beam path. The use of hybrid detectors (Medipix3) that feature a virtually noiseless readout system with capability of single photon detection and energy resolving power enables the diagnostics with a better resolution and higher sensitivity compared to the use of traditional indirect X-ray detection schemes. We describe the detailed system design, which consists of a vacuum compatible focal plane sensor array, a sensor conditioning and readout board and a heterogeneous data processing unit, which also acts as a network server that handles network communications with clients. The readout protocol for the Medipix3 sensor is implemented using field programmable gate array (FPGA) logic resulting in a versatile and scalable system that is capable of performing advanced functions such as data compression techniques and feature extraction. For the system performance measurements, we equipped the instrument with a single Medipix3 die, bump bonded to a Si sensor, rather than four for which it was designed. Without data compression, it is capable of acquiring magnified images and profiles of synchrotron X-ray beams at a transfer rate through Ethernet of 27 frames/s for one Medipix3 die.
ISSN:1748-0221
1748-0221
DOI:10.1088/1748-0221/9/12/C12036