Portable system for imaging of α, β, and X-ray sources with silicon pixel detectors and Medipix1 readout

A portable system has been developed for the control and the readout of a 64 x 64 pixel silicon hybrid detector (1.1 x 1.1 cm(2) active area), bump-bonded to the Medipix1 readout chip. This system, originally designed for biomedical imaging applications, is based on a standard commercial digital I/O board and a compact dedicated interface (p-MUROS), connected to a portable (or desktop) PC. The Medipix1 chip is hosted in a removable chip carrier directly placed on the p-MUROS board. This board is a simplified version of the MUROS1 readout board already developed in the framework of the Medipix collaboration. A user-friendly software system (Medisoft 3.3) has been written to provide control of the system and image acquisition, display, and processing. This complete hardware/software imaging system has been used with or without high-resolution collimators, with laboratory alpha, beta, and gamma sources for test purposes, and represents the portable version of the desktop imaging system developed for beta-autoradiography. The system description and complete imaging tests are presented.