The Maia detector and event mode

A decade ago, prototypes of the Maia detector successfully demonstrated a fresh approach to X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM) imaging that combined a massively parallel detector architecture with dedicated pulse shaping and capture on each channel, asynchronous acquisition of X-rays as an event stream, and real-time processing of the event data [1, 2]. Today, a number of XFM beamlines that raster scan a sample through a focused X-ray beam to construct images of element concentration and chemical state use a 384-detector array version of Maia for high-throughput, high-definition XFM. The beamlines include those at the Australian Synchrotron (AS) in Melbourne [3], the PETRA III synchrotron at DESY, Hamburg [4], the CHESS synchrotron at Cornell University in Ithaca [5], and the NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in New York...