A novel system for X-ray crystallography and medical radiology

A novel system for data capture and processing from radiation detectors in the fields of X-ray crystallographyand medical radiology has been developed. In its first version the system includes a custom made mixed analog-digital 16-channel VLSI circuit in 50 /spl mu/m pitch. Each channel comprises a charge amplifier, a shaper and a 21 bit counter. The circuit can be scaled in a daisy chainconfiguration. Data acquisition is performed with a custom made PCI card while the software is developed with visual C++ in MS Windows environment. Performance of a fully operational system, in terms of electronics noise and data capture speed is presented.