I-IMAS: A 1.5D sensor for high-resolution scanning

We have developed a 1.5D CMOS active pixel sensor to be used in conjunction with a scintillator for X-ray imaging. Within the Intelligent Imaging Sensors (I-ImaS) project, multiple sensors will be aligned to form a line-scanning system and its performance evaluated with respect to existing sensors in other digital radiography systems. Each sensor contains a 512×32 array of pixels and the electronics to convert the collected amount of charge to a digital output value. These include programmable gain amplifiers (PGAs) and analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs). The gain of the PGA can be switched between one or two, to increase the sensitivity for smaller collected charge; the ADC is a 14-bit successive approximation with a sampling rate of 1.25MHz. The ASIC includes a programmable column fixed pattern noise mitigation circuit and a digitally controllable pixel reset mode block. Here we will describe the sensor design and the expected performance.