X-ray radiography plays an important role in the study of artworks. It particularly provides information on the origin, authenticity, painting technique, material conditions and its conservation history. This article describes a system based on semiconductor microstrip detector for acquisition X-ray images using the k-edge logarithmic substraction technique. The system has been characterized and the first images of its application for pigment detection are shown.

La radiografía de rayos-X juega un papel importante en el estudio de obras de arte, específicamente suministra información sobre la génesis, autenticidad, técnica de la pintura, condiciones del material e historia de su conservación. El trabajo muestra un sistema desarrollado, a partir de detectores semiconductores de microbandas para adquirir imágenes de rayos X basado en la técnica de substracción logarítmica del borde de absorción K. El sistema se caracterizó y se muestran las primeras imágenes de su aplicación en la detección de pigmentos.

Circuits that carry out the signal acquisition and processing by multiple channels are required in digital radiography. These circuits should be tested in order to characterize their performance. This paper describes an automated system to control (by a software, from a personal computer) the characterization of a system based on RX64DTH specific integrated circuits with microstrip detectors. The results are shown.

Para la radiografía digital se requieren circuitos que realicen la recepción y procesamiento de señales nucleares de múltiples canales simultáneamente. Estos circuitos se deben someter a pruebas para caracterizar su funcionamiento. En este trabajo se describen pruebas automatizadas para controlar por software desde una computadora personal la caracterización de un sistema basado en circuitos integrados específicos del tipo RX64DTH con detectores de microbandas y se muestran los resultados.

The Large Hadron Collider, now under contruction at the European Center for Nuclear Research, represents a unique opportunity for Heavy-Ion Physics. It will provide nuclear collisions at a center-of-mass energy 30 times higher then the present Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at BNL, currelty the highest energy nuclear accelerator. The LHC will open for this field a new era, in which particle production will be dominated by hard processes, and the energy densities will possibly be high enough to treat the generated quark-gluon plasma as an ideal gas. While RHIC is providing a wealth of interesting data, many physicists are working hard to prepare the experiments which will run at the LHC. ALICE, A Large Ion Collider Experiment, the dedicated detector designed to study nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC, is developing rapidly: the R&D is essentially complete, and large parts of the main detectors are in production. The scientific motivations and present status of Heavy Ion Physics, can be found in the review by T. Kodama [1]. In the following, I will summarize the experimental conditions at the LHC with nuclear beams, describe the main detector components of ALICE and briefly discuss the physics program of the experiment.