A Portable Acquisition System Based on USB Standard for the Medipix2 X-Ray Detector

We describe a portable readout system for an X-ray hybrid detector based on the Medipix2 pixel readout chip. The Medipix2 chip (256times256 square pixels with 55 mum pitch) is bump-bonded with a pixellated Silicon sensor 300-micron thick. The readout system consists of a simple small size electronic card based on a single powerful microcontroller and can be connected to a PC through the widespread Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface. The reduced size of the final card (3.8 cmtimes4.8 cm) makes it suitable for special applications like dental radiology