SBIR-STTR Award

Quantitative energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) x-ray microanalysis provides important information regarding the distribution of elements within a biological sample. The low elemental concentrations in biological specimens require dwell times of several seconds livetime to obtain spectra with significant statistical information, especially for quantitative EDS imaging. Deadtime caused by the rejection of pulse pileup counts is a major limiting factor of x-ray collection during the acquisition of x-ray spectra. The dwell time can be reduced by 25% or more (depending upon beam current conditions) by recovering rejected pulse pileup counts. This significant reduction in deadtime would increase efficiency (both in cost and time) for the collection of quantitative x- ray data and images from biological samples; such improved instrumentation is not currently available. In Phase I, the real-time recovery of pulse pileup counts will be examined using current analog/digital electronics and a digital signal processor to establish the most effective (cost and performance) method. The Phase II goals will be the low cost realization of a new form of pulse pileup-free microanalyzer based on the Phase I results and its application to quantitative x-ray imaging and data acquisition of biological samples.

Thesaurus Terms:
X ray spectrometry, biomedical equipment development

Quantitative energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) x-ray microanalysis provides important information regarding the distribution of elements within a biological sample. Low elemental concentration in biological specimens require dwell times of several seconds livetime to obtain spectra with significant statistical information, especially for quantitative EDS imaging. Deadtime caused by the rejection of pulse pileup counts is a major limiting factor of x-ray collection during the acquisition of x-ray spectra. Phase I a) demonstrated the feasibility, advantages, and minimal performance requirements for pulse pileup recovery, b) described a hardware approach using state-of-the-art digital signal processing, and c) showed that the resulting decrease in rejected pulse events can save significant time and cost by increasing throughput by as much as factor of four. Phase II will advance the design, construct prototypes, and address requirements for commercial implementation. The specific goal is to make the system low-cost and retrofitable into existing EDS systems. The techniques and hardware will be broadly applicable to any scientific instrumentation which utilized pulse height analysis, such as x-ray fluorescence and gamma- ray spectroscopy, and therefore has great potential for commercialization.Thesaurus termsX ray spectrometry, artificial intelligence, biomedical equipment development, electron probe spectrometry, image processing analytical method, nonclinical biomedical equipmentNational Center for Research Resources (NCRR)