FPGA-Based Real-Time Image Manipulation and Advanced Data Acquisition for 2-D-XRAY Detectors
Résumé
Scientific experiments rely on some type of measurements that provide the required data to extract aimed information or conclusions. Data production and analysis are, therefore, essential components at the heart of any scientific experimental application. Traditionally, efforts on detector development for photon sources have focused on the properties and performance of the detection front-ends. In many cases, the data acquisition chain as well as data processing are treated as a complementary component of the detector system and added at a later stage of the project. In most cases, data processing tasks are entrusted to CPUs; achieving, thus, the minimum bandwidth requirements and keeping hardware relatively simple in terms of functionalities. This also minimizes design effort, complexity, and implementation cost. This approach is changing in the last few years as it does not accommodate new high-performance detectors; field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and GPUs are now used to perform complex image manipulation tasks such as image reconstruction, image rotation, accumulation, filtering, and data analysis. This frees up CPUs for simpler tasks. The objective of this article is to present both the implementation of real-time FPGA-based image manipulation techniques, as well as the performance of the European Synchrotron radiation Facility (ESRF) data acquisition platform called remote direct memory access (RDMA)-based acquisition system for high-performance applications (RASHPA), into the back-end board of the SMARTPIX photon-counting detector developed at the ESRF.