Patent ID: 8384038

Claim:
A data acquisition system comprising: a charge-sensitive amplifier (CSA) configured to receive a charge from an x-ray detector, the CSA comprising: a high-gain electronic voltage amplifier; an electrical energy storage device coupled in parallel with the high-gain electronic voltage amplifier; and an electrical resistor coupled in parallel with the high-gain electronic voltage amplifier; a baseline sampling circuit configured to receive an output from the CSA and configured to sample a baseline signal from the CSA to compensate for baseline wander; at least one discriminator coupled to an output of the CSA and to an output of the baseline sampling circuit, the at least one discriminator configured to output a voltage if the output of the CSA exceeds a threshold voltage; a counter coupled to an output of the discriminator and configured to output a digital signal indicative of a photon count received at the x-ray detector and based on the output from the CSA and based on the baseline signal from the CSA; and a controller configured to monitor the output of the at least one discriminator and control a sampling rate of the baseline signal.