Potential impact of silicon pixel detectors on structural biology

X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy play key roles in high-resolution biological structure determination. It is important to minimise the radiation dose during imaging as all biological specimens are susceptible to radiation damage. This requires the use of the most efficient detectors possible to collect data. A detector with good spatial resolution is needed to capture high-resolution features in the image. Detection efficiency is also important; efficiency and resolution can be combined in a single property, defined as the detective quantum efficiency (DQE), and particularly DQE as a function of spatial frequency, which is very useful in comparing properties of different detectors. This review deals mainly with two types of pixellated silicon devices, viz. monolithic active pixel sensor (MAPS) and hybrid detectors (Medipix). We discuss the performance of both these detectors for electron microscopy and hybrid pixel detectors for X-ray crystallography, emphasizing the potential advantages they bring to data collection.