Component level modular design of a Solid State X-ray Image Intensifier for an M×N array

The Solid-State X-ray Image Intensifier (SSXII) is a novel dynamic x-ray imager, based on an array of electron-multiplying CCDs (EMCCDs), that can significantly improve performance compared to conventional x-ray image intensifiers (XIIs) and flat panel detectors (FPDs). To expand the field-of-view (FOV) of the SSXII detectors while maintaining high resolution, a scalable component level modular design is presented. Each module can be fit together with minimum dead-space and optically coupled to one contiguous x-ray converter plate. The electronics of each of the modules consists of a detachable head-board, on which is mounted the EMCCD, and a driver board. The size of the head-boards is minimized to ensure that the modules fit together properly. The driver boards connect with the head-boards via flat cables and are designed to be plugged into the main mother-board that contains an FPGA chip that generates the driving clock signals for the EMCCDs and analog-to-digital converter (ADC). At the front-end, a high speed ADC on each of the driver boards samples and digitizes the EMCCD analog output signal and an extensible modular digital multiplexer back-end is used to acquire and combine image data from multiple modules. The combined digital data is then transmitted to a PC via a standard Camera Link interface. Eventually, this modular design will be extended to a 3×3 or larger array to accomplish full clinical FOVs and enable the SSXII to replace conventional lower-resolution XIIs or FPDs.