Fast spectroscopic imaging with pixel semiconductor detector Timepix and parallel data reading

Non-invasive techniques utilizing X-ray radiation offer a powerful tool for the inspection of the inner composition of a wide variety of objects. The highly sensitive hybrid semiconductor pixel detector Timepix is capable of detecting and resolving subtle and low-contrast differences in radiography measurements. Moreover the Timepix detector offers 65536 individual pixels with spectrometric capabilities. With proper per-pixel energy calibration this feature enables the application of various energy based imaging techniques - from basic energy windowing to fully spectroscopic imaging. The main limitations of these methods are the detector energy resolution and data acquisition speed of 100 frames per second - the necessity of taking frames with low occupancy for event by event cluster analysis leads to several hours long measurements. The latter nuisance can be overcome by the utilization of the newly developed modular read-out FITPix3 with the adapter chipboard designed for parallel data reading. This read-out version can acquire over 850 compressed frames per second which reduces the measurement time of many spectroscopic measurements by factor of ten (spectra with high enough statistics are taken in tens of minutes). The short description of the new FITPix3 parallel read-out together with the progression in spectroscopic multi-channel energy imaging demonstrated on model samples are presented in this contribution.