ABSTRACT
We have developed and demonstrated an image super-resolution method-XR-UNLOC: X-Ray UNsupervised particle LOCalization-for hard x-rays measured with fast-frame-rate detectors that is an adaptation of the principle of photo-activated localization microscopy (PALM) and stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM), which enabled biological fluorescence imaging at sub-optical-wavelength scales. We demonstrate the approach on experimental coherent Bragg diffraction data measured with 52 keV x-rays from a nanocrystalline sample. From this sample, we resolve the fine fringe detail of a high-energy x-ray Bragg coherent diffraction pattern to an upsampling factor of 16 of the native pixel pitch of 30 µm of a charge-integrating fastCCD detector. This was accomplished by analysis of individual photon locations in a series of "nearly-dark" instances of the diffraction pattern that each contain only a handful of photons. Central to our approach was the adaptation of the UNLOC photon fitting routine for PALM/STORM to the hard x-ray regime to handle much smaller point spread functions, which required a different statistical test for photon detection and for sub-pixel localization. A comparison to a photon-localization strategy used in the x-ray community ("droplet analysis") showed that XR-UNLOC provides significant improvement in super-resolution. We also developed a metric by which to estimate the limit of reliable upsampling with XR-UNLOC under a given set of experimental conditions in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio of a photon detection event and the size of the point spread function for guiding future x-ray experiments in many disciplines where detector pixelation limits must be overcome.
ABSTRACT
The designs of a compact, fast CCD (cFCCD) camera, together with a resonant soft x-ray scattering endstation, are presented. The cFCCD camera consists of a highly parallel, custom, thick, high-resistivity CCD, readout by a custom 16-channel application specific integrated circuit to reach the maximum readout rate of 200 frames per second. The camera is mounted on a virtual-axis flip stage inside the RSXS chamber. When this flip stage is coupled to a differentially pumped rotary seal, the detector assembly can rotate about 100°/360° in the vertical/horizontal scattering planes. With a six-degrees-of-freedom cryogenic sample goniometer, this endstation has the capability to detect the superlattice reflections from the electronic orderings showing up in the lower hemisphere. The complete system has been tested at the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and has been used in multiple experiments at the Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
ABSTRACT
We present a data acquisition system to perform on-the-fly background subtraction and lower-level discrimination compression of streaming x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy data from a fast charge-coupled device (CCD) area detector. The system is built using a commercial frame grabber with an on-board field-programmable gate array. The system is capable of continuously processing at least 60 CCD frames per second each consisting of 1024 × 1024 16-bit pixels with â² 15,000 photon hits per frame at a maximum compression factor of ≈95%.
ABSTRACT
A charge-coupled device (CCD) capable of 200 Mpixels/s readout has been designed and fabricated on thick, high-resistivity silicon. The CCDs, up to 600 microm thick, are fully depleted, ensuring good infrared to x-ray detection efficiency, together with a small point spread function. High readout speed, with good analog performance, is obtained by the use of a large number of parallel output ports. A set of companion 16-channel custom readout integrated circuits, capable of 15 bits of dynamic range, is used to read out the CCD. A gate array-controlled back end data acquisition system frames and transfers images, as well as provides the CCD clocks.