Microelectronics technologies for new detectors in medical imaging

The use of silicon chips for instrumentation developments in elementary particle physics serves as an example for other applications and digital imaging detectors could find use in medical and molecular imaging. Attractive features are direct quantum conversion in a semiconductor matrix, innovative three-dimensional modular detector construction, multilayer devices, very fast signal processing, on-line data pre-processing and massive parallelism at the system level. Cost aspects of such semiconductor imager options have to be taken into account in the R&D phase. With the integrated electronics and high density interconnects in the Medipix development as an example, the ultimate aim of single photon imaging comes within reach.