COMPARISON OF IMAGING PLATE AND CCD-BASED X-RAY DETECTORS FOR MACROMOLECULES. Y. Amemiya1 and K. Ito2, 1Department of Applied Physics, School of Engineering, The Univ. of Tokyo, Yayoi, Bunkyo, Tokyo 113, 2Graduate Univ. for Advanced Studies
In x-ray diffraction experiments for macromolecules with use of synchrotron radiation, imaging plate (storage phosphor) detectors1 and CCD-based x-ray area detectors2 are currently two of the most widely used x-ray area detectors3. Regarding the CCD-based detectors, they are classified into two types; one employs an image intensifier (referred as an "intensifier-coupled CCD")4,5, and the other employs a tapered optical fiber (referred as a "fiber-coupled CCD")6,7,8 as a device to de-magnify x-ray image onto a small format CCD. The above three types of the x-ray detectors have high detective quantum efficiency (DQE) (30 - 80 %) and wide dynamic range (4 - 5 orders of magnitude). Besides, they all are well suited to experiments with use of synchrotron radiation, because they don't suffer from count rate limitation,
The intensifier-coupled CCD has a higher DQE compared with the fiber-coupled CCD and the imaging plate. The measured DQEs of the above three types of the detectors will be compared quantitatively and the physics of noise propagation underlying the DQEs of these detectors will be discussed. Other performance characteristics such as dynamic range, linearity of response, and image distortion will be also compared among the three types of the detectors. Finally, advantage and disadvantage of the three types of x-ray detectors ("imaging plate", "intensifier-coupled CCD", and "fiber-coupled CCD") will be discussed from the viewpoint of application for macromolecular crystallography.
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