This is a collaborative project between the Universities of Manchester, Durham, Surrey, Birkbeck and The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) that will develop a new range of detectors for high energy X-ray imaging. The project will deliver, over a four year period, the necessary technology to enhance X-ray imaging in a wide range of applications including those listed in the following paragraph.

A major part of the remit of the HEXITEC project is to establish a UK network of users with specific applications. If you have such an application or would like more information please register interest on this web site.

The Project has been funded by EPSRC on behalf of RCUK under the Basic Technology Programme.

The introduction of computed tomography has dramatically expanded the diagnostic resources available to medics. The automotive and aerospace industries use similar methods to find faults, cracks and dislocations in critical components. The scanners used at airports for baggage surveillance have increased in sophistication and now produce images with substance recognition. X-ray imaging cameras have even been launched into space in order to provide more detailed information about the origins of our universe. These digital imaging methods have had a profound effect across disciplines ranging from medicine to oil exploration and from process engineering to airport security. However slice by slice reconstructions are time consuming and have high dose consequences especially for in vivo studies. Higher energy X-ray imaging has major advantages over current lower energy modalities for the life and physical sciences including improved phase contrast images on larger, higher density samples with lower accumulated doses.

The vast majority of conventional tomographic images ignore the depth of information from colour (multi-wavelength) X-rays. These scattered colour X-rays contain potentially vital information about the atomic structure and chemistry at every voxel within the 3D image. However the development of spectroscopic imaging at high energy is being hindered by the lack of suitable material to detect the scattered X-rays over a wide enough area. Despite the huge impact such technology would deliver there are no readily available materials anywhere in the world that meet the demanding specification of such high energy X-ray imaging. Hence RCUK has funded this basic technology programme.