A new data acquisition and imaging system for nuclear microscopy based on a Field Programmable Gate Array card

The introduction of the new Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) cards by National Instruments has made it possible for the first time to develop reconfigurable custom data acquisition hardware easily with the LabVIEW programming environment. Data acquisition issues such as precise timing for scanning and operating system latencies can now be easily overcome using this new technology because the data acquisition software is embedded in the FPGA chip on the card. In this paper we present the first results of the new data acquisition system developed at the Centre for Ion Beam Applications (CIBA), National University of Singapore using the new National Instruments cards in conjunction with rack mountable Wilkinson type ADCs.