X-ray characterization of CMOS imaging detector with high resolution for fluoroscopic imaging application

This paper introduces complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) active pixel sensor (APS)-based X-ray imaging detectors with high spatial resolution for medical imaging application. In this study, our proposed X-ray CMOS imaging sensor has been fabricated by using a 0.35 µm 1 Poly 4 Metal CMOS process. The pixel size is 100 µm×100 µm and the pixel array format is 24×96 pixels, which provide a field-of-view (FOV) of 9.6 mm×2.4 mm. The 14.3-bit extend counting analog-to digital converter (ADC) with built-in binning mode was used to reduce the area and simultaneously improve the image resolution. Both thallium-doped CsI (CsI:Tl) and Gd2O2S:Tb scintillator screens were used as converters for incident X-rays to visible light photons. The optical property and X-ray imaging characterization such as X-ray to light response as a function of incident X-ray exposure dose, spatial resolution and X-ray images of objects were measured under different X-ray energy conditions. The measured results suggest that our developed CMOS-based X-ray imaging detector has the potential for fluoroscopic imaging and cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) imaging applications.