MI-3 Plus

CMOS Active Pixel Sensors (APS) are revolutionising many aspects of imaging with their superior performance, flexibility and close integration with the acquisition and processing requirements. Their progress is, in no small part, due to advances in mainstream CMOS technology. Industry is focussed on developing CMOS imagers for the mass markets such as digital cameras and mobile phones. Within MI-3, we brought together sufficient technology expertise and users to exploit APS technology for a broad range of science. This project, MI-3 Plus, will take forward one aspect of this technology - namely, the realisation of radiation-hard, wafer-scale imagers, approximately 12 cm square, specially designed for scientific and clinical use. In doing so, we directly address one of the challenges set out in the EPSRC Grand Challenges in Silicon Technology (2008) - Large imaging arrays for use in medical applications and imaging of explosives and weapons. Such large imagers will be able to cope with an accumulated radiation dose in excess of 10 MRad, be approximately 12 cm x 12 cm and incorporate programmable intra-frame resets and binning to cope with the wide dynamics of image intensity found in many medical/scientific applications. It would be possible to tile these imagers, with a minimum bonding gap, to produce torso-wide lensless systems for radiography, etc. The imagers, and the supporting acquisition systems, will be trialled in number of key application areas, namely:* Bone/breast radiography using laboratory and synchrotron sources * Structural crystallography on laboratory and synchrotron sources* High resolution and discriminatory baggage screening * Digital mammography, in particular tomosynthesis (3D imaging) * Radiation-hard very large area sensors for radiotherapy (x-ray and proton) The more general capabilities of CMOS technology can be exploited in miniature analytical instruments for medicine, life sciences, etc - the so-called Lab-on-a-chip concept. This is another topic that forms one of the EPSRC Grand Challenges. Through selective etching of our APS devices we will demonstrate the advantages of very efficient imaging - at high sensitivity and resolution - using this new approach.Overall, comparisons with existing methods will be rigorously undertaken; and the resulting systems will be widely demonstrated to their respective user communities and associated commercial system providers.