Instantaneous measurement system of the effective photon energy for a single shot x-ray pulse radiation

For a short pulse x-ray radiation with extremely broad spectrum such as Bremsstrahlung, the effective photon energy cannot be determined by conventional x-ray detectors with only a single x-ray pulse shot. An instantaneous measurement system capable of determining the energy with a single shot has been developed. The system is made of a metal-oxide-semiconductor linear array image sensor, a scintillation phospher, and an absorber material, and a control system of the sensor. The energy of a hard x-ray pulse with a short pulse duration of 500 ns is determined with this system. It is shown that the system can determine the energy more quickly and accurately than with the conventional method. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0034-6748(99)00108-2].