Optical link based readout system for Medipix2 quad X-ray detector

An imaging system based on the Medipix2, a single photon counting pixel readout ASIC for X-ray hybrid detectors, has been developed for tomography imaging applications. The “quad assembly” houses four Medipix2 chips placed in a 2×2 array with an active area of about 3×3 cm2. The readout system we present consists of four electronic cards and exploits the Medipix2 parallel readout mode and a fast optical link based on the Glink standard, giving high flexibility and EM interference immunity over long distance connections. A PCI board interfaces the imaging system to a standard PC. We expect a frame rate of 25 frame/s which allows real-time X-ray imaging acquisitions and fast computed tomography (CT) scanning. In this paper, we describe the DAQ project and the status of development.