Impressions

Worlds Fastest Crystallographic Data Collection

The following movie shows probably the worlds fastest crystallographic data collection (move mouse over image to reveal movie navigation!).
Data collection took 3 s - data reduction 50 s - less than 1min! It is an impressive demonstration of speed of the PILATUS 6M detector and its integration at the Protein Crystallography Beamline at the Swiss Light Source.

experimental details: insulin crystal, φ=30º, Δφ=1.0º, Δt=0.1 s
computational details: data reduction with XDS in 50 s (parallel on 4 Intel Xeon CPU 5160@3.00GHz)

Single Crystal Diffraction

The SLS Detector Group and the Protein Crystallography Group of the Swiss Light Source took various diffraction data sets to test the PILATUS 6M detector system and to evaluate the high performance in terms of dynamic range, speed and data quality. The unique properties of this novel type of x-ray detector have been confirmed in these experiments. Many thanks to Walter Steurer from the Laboratory of Crystallography (ETH Zurich) for providing crystals for these test experiments.

PILATUS 6M: Insulin Protein Crystal		PILATUS 6M: Ferritin Protein Crystal
PILATUS 6M: Insulin Protein Crystal - ZOOM		PILATUS 6M: Ferritin Protein Crystal - ZOOM
PILATUS 6M: Decagonal AlIrOs Quasicrystal		PILATUS 6M: Samson Phase
PILATUS 6M: Decagonal AlIrOs Quasicrystal - ZOOM		PILATUS 6M: Samson Phase - ZOOM
Fig. 1: X-ray diffraction images recorded from an insulin protein crystal (top left, zoomed section below, energy = 8 keV, sample to detector distance = 346 mm), a ferritin protein crystal (top right, zoomed section below, energy = 16 keV, distance = 204 mm), a decagonal Al-Ir-Os quasirystal (bottom left, zoomed section below, energy = 16keV, distance 346 mm) and the Samson phase (bottom right, zoomed section below, energy = 16 keV, distance = 150 mm).

Medical Imaging

Franz Pfeiffer, Oliver Bunk, Martin Brecht (Coherent Scattering Group, Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut) and Christian David (X-Ray Optics and Applications Group, Laboratory for Micro- and Nanotechnology, Paul Scherrer Institut) have carried out first test experiments to evaluate the performance of the PILATUS detector system for medical imaging purposes. X-ray images of a test sample (chicken wing) have been recorded in the conventional absorption mode and in a recently developed novel hard x-ray phase contrast imaging mode [1]. The results obtained with the PILATUS 100K detector are compared to images obtained with a standard scintillator based imaging system operated under the same conditions.

[1] F. Pfeiffer, T. Weitkamp, O. Bunk, and C. David. Phase retrieval and differential phase-contrast imaging with low-brilliance X-ray source. Nature Physics 2, 258-261 (2006).

PILATUS 100K		CCD (Fingerlakes Instruments, FLI IMG 1001)
Fig. 2 : X-ray absorption images (top) and phase contrast images (bottom) of a chicken wing sample taken with a PILATUS 100K detector (left) and a standard scintillator based imaging system operated (right). The latter consists of a 0.150 mm thick Cesium Iodide (CsI) scintillation screen with a 1:2.5 demagnifying optical lens system and a cooled charge coupled device (Fingerlakes Instruments, FLI IMG 1001, KODAK chip with 1024 x 1024 pixels, 0.024 x 0.024 mm2 pixel size). The images recorded with the Pilatus and the CCD system were acquired using the same total exposure time (80 s) and identical settings of the x-ray generator (40 kV/ 25 mA).

Origami Animals

Victoria Wright, Celeste Fleta and David Pennicard (Diamond Light Source) took absorption images of origamis with a PILATUS 100K detector (untrimmed) and a Fe55 source. The nice thing about the origami animals is that you can see the folds of the paper even though the maximum number of counts per pixel outside of the origami is about 8 counts.

PILATUS 100K		PILATUS 100K
Fig. 3 : Origami bird and frog illuminated with an Fe55 source. The overall number of x-rays outside of the origami approximately 8 counts.