A detector that looks promising for advanced imaging modalities--such as X-ray absorption contrast imaging, X-ray fluorescence imaging, and diffraction-enhanced imaging--is the controlled-drift detector (CDD). The CDD is a novel two-dimensional X-ray imager with energy resolving capability of spectroscopic quality. It is built on a fully depleted silicon wafer and features fast readout while being operated at or near room temperature. The use of CDDs in the aforementioned applications allows translating these techniques from synchrotron-based experiments to laboratory-size experiments using polychromatic X-ray generators. We have built a dedicated and versatile detection module based on a 36 mm2 CDD chip featuring pixels of 180 x 180 microm 2, and we evaluated the system performance in different X-ray imaging applications both with synchrotron-based experiments and in the laboratory environment.