Photon counting X-ray detector technology is being taken forward by Varex Imaging and so this year, for the first time, Dr York Haemisch, our Director of Medical and Research Markets, shared news of the move and the many benefits it will bring with attendees at iWoRiD.
Here, York provides his highlights from iWoRid 2022. In future, you will be able to keep pace with all the latest news and advances in our photon counting technology at Varex Imaging.
The shores of Lake Garda basked in temperatures of 35 degrees as iWoRiD 2022 opened its regular sessions to a surprisingly large gathering of 250-300 registered participants, exceeding even pre-Covid numbers. A key focus for day one was developments around the Medipix and Timiepix 4th generation. Timepix4 has existed in prototypes since 2019, however, it seems there are still some challenges with Medipix4, in particular the application of TSVs. Also, the Medipix collaboration have been changing the semiconductor process to 65 nm which obviously adds further complications. Nevertheless, there was great sense of optimism that this next generation of the photon counting chip will improve in a lot of parameters, despite the fact that only simulations have been shown so far. Other talks concentrated, for the most part, on detector designs associated with the experiments at CERN and the new European synchrotron in Grenoble.
Day two of the meeting saw, alongside the discussion of new detector concepts for the European XFEL and other large scale experiments, an interesting session on applications of the technology. Dr. Luca Brombal from INFN in Trieste provided an introductory overview on spectral and phase contrast imaging. His conclusion was that the combination of both methods would deliver the ultimate gain in information, in particular in medical imaging. Later in the day, Dr Kris Iniewski from Redlen reported on new developments on high-flux CdZnTe detectors for computed tomography CT.