Speaker
Description
For more than a century, X-ray imaging has been largely synonymous with absorption contrast. Today, however, advances in detector technology are fundamentally changing this paradigm. Modern detectors are evolving from passive image sensors into instruments that determine which physical property of the X-ray beam is measured. Beyond attenuation, they can now provide access to photon energy, wavefront distortions, small-angle scattering, and ultrafast temporal dynamics, enabling a new generation of multimodal X-ray imaging techniques.
This presentation reviews recent developments in detector concepts that are driving this transformation, including photon-counting and energy-resolving detectors, direct-conversion semiconductor technologies, hybrid pixel detectors, and emerging ultrafast architectures for synchrotron, free-electron laser, and fusion plasma diagnostics [1-5]. Their implementation in spectral imaging, and phase-contrast imaging, dark-field imaging, and time-resolved experiments will be illustrated through representative examples. Particular attention will be given to the intimate relationship between detector architecture and the physical information that can be extracted from an experiment.
A central theme of the talk is that each imaging modality is linked to a distinct physical observable extracted by the detector: absorption measures attenuation, spectral imaging resolves photon energy, phase-contrast reveals wavefront distortions, dark-field imaging quantifies unresolved microstructure through small-angle scattering, and time-resolved detection captures the evolution of dynamic processes on ever shorter timescales. This transition from measuring intensity alone to measuring multiple complementary observables is fundamentally redefining the role of X-ray detectors.
As detector technologies continue to evolve, they are no longer simply recording X-ray images—they are becoming scientific instruments capable of simultaneously encoding multiple physical observables from every detected photon. The next revolution in X-ray imaging will therefore be driven not only by brighter sources, but by detector systems that transform every photon into a richer source of quantitative information, paving the way toward truly multimodal X-ray diagnostics across synchrotron science, free-electron lasers, fusion research, medicine, and industry.