Patent ID: 8497463

Claim:
A device for counting photons, the device comprising: a detector unit that, for detection of the photons, is configured to generate an electrical detected signal containing one detection pulse for each detected photon; a switching unit configured to be impinged upon by the detected signal and to trigger a switching state for each detection pulse, the switching unit having multiple switching states and being configured to generate an electrical state signal that has state signal levels associated with the respective switching states; a sampling unit that, for serial generation of sampled data, is configured to sample the state signal at a predetermined sampling frequency, the sampled data having in each case, for each state signal level, an n-bit binary value where n≧1; a serial-parallel converter unit configured to parallelize the serially generated sampled data by grouping a predetermined number of successive sampled data into a respective sampled data packet; and an evaluation unit having a predetermined working cycle time that is less than the sampling frequency of the sampling unit, the evaluation unit being configured to evaluate, within each clock cycle defined by the working cycle time, the n-bit binary values of at least one of the respective sampled data packets so as to identify a partial counter result indicating the number of switching state changes occurring in the switching unit, and to add partial counter results identified in the individual clock cycles so as to yield a total counter result that indicates the number of photons detected.