X-ray color imaging with 3D sensitive voxel detector

X-ray imaging is today widely used in a broad range of applications. Nevertheless some limitations are represented by the inability to distinguish between a thick layer of low Z material and a thin layer of high Z material, and by the beam hardening, where the incident X-ray spectrum is modified as the beam traverses the sample. Such effects cause problems in many applications (e.g. CT reconstruction) generating artifacts and worsening the spatial resolution. This work presents a new technique allowing spectral sensitivity using a new 3D voxel detector based on the Timepix pixel detector. The device is designed as a layered stack of several Timepix sensors. The readout chip is thinned down to reduce the amount of insensitive absorbing material. Every single layers in the stack act as a filter, i.e. each stack layer visualizes a different part of the spectrum attenuated by the object giving further information about the object composition. The comparison of attenuation levels observed in different detector layers can be used to estimate the extent of the beam hardening effect in the imaged object and thus point out differences in the material composition.