areaDetector: EPICS Area Detector Support

R1-0beta

March 21, 2008

Mark Rivers

University of Chicago

 

Contents

 

Overview

The areaDetector module provides a general-purpose interface for area (2-D) detectors in EPICS. It is intended to be used with a wide variety of detectors and cameras, ranging from high frame rate video cameras, pixel-array detectors such as the Pilatus, and large format detectors like the MAR-345 online imaging plate.

The goals of this module are:

 

Architecture

The architecture of the areaDetector module is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Architecture of areaDetector module.

The EPICS implementation consists of the following:

 

EPICS records

The following EPICS records are used by pilatusROI. All records are prefixed by the macro $(DET) which must be passed to the template file when the records are loaded.

Acquisition related records

Detector related records

File name related records

The FilePath, Filename, FileNumber, and FileFormat PVs are all used to create the final FullFilename.

ROI related records

The SNL code supports up to 32 rectangular ROIs. Fewer ROIs can be used by loading the pilatusROI_N.template file fewer than 32 times, and passing NROIS<32 to the SNL program when it is started. In the following record names $(N) is a number from 1 to 32. ROIs can be any size from a single pixel to the entire chip. An ROI is considered invalid and ignorred by the SNL program if any of Xmin, Xmax, YMin, YMax is less than 0 or greater than the size of the chip in that direction. The ROI is also invalid if Xmin>XMax or YMin>YMax. The ROI$(N)TotalCounts and ROI$(N)NetCounts are computed as each TIFF file is read, regardless of the value of NImages. The ROI$(N)WFTotalCounts and ROI$(N)WFNetCounts arrays are computed and posted to EPICS when acquiring data with NImages>1. The first element in each array is the for the first image in the series, etc.

Image related records

Bad pixel map related records

Flat field correction related records

Communication related records

Scan related records