Abstract—The Micromegas (Micro-MEsh Gaseous Structure) detectors have been invented for the detection of ionizing particles in experimental physics, in particular in particle and nuclear physics. This detector technology is also one of the most promising candidates to be used during the upgrade of the particle detectors installed at the Large Hadron Collider. Current Micromegas detectors reach a spatial resolution of less than 50 μm. This would allow the usage of the Micromegas technology as an X-Ray imaging device with an active area of several m2 at very low production costs.
In this paper we present the latest status of Micromegas detector developments and discuss preliminary results on their photon detection performance in various energy-regimes and flux-rates. These performance tests are performed using a 8keV X-Ray source. We extrapolate our findings to energies and fluxes, which are relevant for possible industrial applications. It can be concluded that Micromegas detectors have a large potential to be used as active photon detection devices for a large variety of industrial applications for low energy, i.e. up to 50keV, X-Ray imaging.

Index Terms—Particle physics, medical physics, x-ray imaging, medical imaging, photon detection, particle detection.

M. Schott is with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), Switzerland (e-mail: mschott@cern.ch).
T. Alexopoulos is with National Technical Univ. of Athens Greece.

Cite: M. Schott and T. Alexopoulos, "Feasibility Study of Industrial Applications of Micromegas Detectors," International Journal of Applied Physics and Mathematics  vol. 2, no. 6, pp. 446-448, 2012.