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- Abdalla, Munir A, et al.
(author)
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A CMOS APS for dental X-ray imaging using scintillating sensors
- 2001
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In: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A. - 0168-9002 .- 1872-9576. ; 460:1, s. 197-203
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this paper we present an integrating CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) circuit to be used with scintillator type X-ray sensors for intra oral dental X-ray imaging systems. Different pixel architectures were constructed to explore their performance characteristics and to study the feasibility of the development of such systems using the CMOS technology. A prototype 64 x 80 pixel array has been implemented in a CMOS 0.8 mum double poly n-well process with a pixel pitch of 50 mum. A spectral sensitivity measurement for the different pixels topologies, as well as measured X-ray direct absorption in the different APSs are presented. A measurement of the output signal showed a good linearity over a wide dynamic range. This chip showed that the very low sensitivity of the CMOS APSs to direct X-ray exposure adds a great advantage to the various CMOS advantages over CCD-based imaging systems,
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- Abdalla, Munir A, et al.
(author)
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An integrating CMOS APS for X-ray imaging with an in-pixel preamplifier
- 2001
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In: Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A. - 0168-9002 .- 1872-9576. ; 466:1, s. 232-236
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We present in this paper an integrating CMOS Active Pixel Sensor (APS) circuit coated with scintillator type sensors for intra-oral dental X-ray imaging systems. The photosensing element in the pixel is formed by the p-diffusion on the n-well diode. The advantage of this photosensor is its very low direct absorption of X-rays compared to the other available photosensing elements in the CMOS pixel. The pixel features an integrating capacitor in the feedback loop of a preamplifier of a finite gain in order to increase the optical sensitivity. To verify the effectiveness of this in-pixel preamplification, a prototype 32 x 80 element CMOS active pixel array was implemented in a 0.8 mum CMOS double poly, n-well process with a pixel pitch of 50 mum. Measured results confirmed the improved optical sensitivity performance of the APS. Various measurements on device performance are presented.
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- Abdalla, Suliman A
(author)
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Architecture and circuit design of photon counting readout for X-ray imaging sensors
- 2007
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Hybrid pixel array detectors for X-ray imaging are based on different technologies for sensor and readout electronics. The readout electronics are based on standard CMOS technologies that are experiencing continuously rapid improvements by means of down-scaling the feature sizes, which in turn lead to higher transistor densities, lower power consumption, and faster circuits. For pixel-array imaging sensors the improvements in CMOS technology opens up new possibilities of integrating more functionality in the pixels for local processing of the sensor data. However, new issues related to the tight integration of both analog and digital processing circuits within the small area of a pixel must also be evaluated. The advantages of down-scaling the CMOS technology can be utilized to increase the spatial resolution by reducing the pixel sizes. Recent research indicates however that the bottleneck in reaching further spatial resolution in X-ray imaging sensors may not be limited by the circuit area occupied by the functions necessary in the pixels, but are instead related to problems associated with charge-sharing of charges generated by the sensor which are distributed over a neighbourhood of pixels and will limit the spatial resolution and lead to a distortion of the energy spectrum. In this thesis a mechanism to be implemented in the readout circuits is proposed in order to suppress the charge-sharing effects. The proposed architecture and its circuit implementation are evaluated with respect to circuit complexity (area) and power consumption. For a photon-counting pixel it is demonstrated that the complete pixel, with charge-sharing suppression mechanism, can be implemented using 300 transistors with an idle power consumption of 2.7μW in a 120nm CMOS technology operating with a 1.2V power supply. The improvements in CMOS technology can also be used for increasing the range of applications for X-ray imaging sensors. In this thesis, an architecture is proposed for multiple energy discrimination, called color X-ray imaging. The proposed solution is the result of balancing the circuit complexity and the image quality. The method is based on color sub-sampling with intensity biasing. For three-level energy discrimination, that corresponds to color imaging systems for visible light with R, G, and B color components, the increase in circuit complexity will be only 20% higher than that for the Bayer method but results in significantly better image quality. As the circuit complexity in the digital processing within each pixel is increased, the digitally induced noise may play an increasingly important role for the signal-to-noise ratio in the measurements. In this thesis an initial study is conducted regarding how the digital switching noise affects the analog amplifiers in the photon-counting pixel.
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- Abdalla, Suliman, et al.
(author)
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Architecture and Circuit Design for Color X-Ray Pixal Array Detector Read-Out Electronics
- 2007
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In: 24th Norchip Conference, 2006. - New York : IEEE conference proceedings. - 9781424407729 ; , s. 271-276
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper proposes an area- and power-efficient implementation of the read-out electronics for color X-ray pixel detectors for imaging. Introducing multiple levels of energy discrimination will increase the complexity of the read-out electronics in each pixel. The proposed architecture has full resolution for the intensity and reduced resolution for the energy spectrum (color), which leads to a good compromise of image quality and circuit complexity. We show that the increase in complexity, compared to single energy-range pixel, will lead to increase in circuit area of less than 20%.
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- Abdalla, Suliman, et al.
(author)
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Circuit Implementation of Mechanism for Charge-Sharing Suppression for Photon-Counting Pixel Arrays
- 2005
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In: 23rd NORCHIP Conference 2005. - : IEEE conference proceedings. - 1424400643 ; , s. 137-140
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This work proposes an efficient circuit implementation of a mechanism for charge-sharing suppression in photon-counting pixel arrays based on current-mode circuits for the analog parts. The additional circuits needed for charge-sharing suppression in a four-pixel cluster, leads to an increase in power consumption of 36% and only a marginal increase in circuit area. The implemented pixel with window-discrimination, managing charge-sharing in a four-pixel cluster and with an event-counter of 13 bits, consists of 300 transistors and has a power consumption of 2.7 μW when idle. It is implemented in a 120nm CMOS process and the presented results are based on simulations.
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