Digital Radiography

Digital radiographic equipment was designed to reduce the number of steps a

radiographer needed to make in order to create an image; there are many ways that this is done.
But first when converting to digital radiography there are different formats that are used to
process the image, a binary code is used to transfer the image data into a picture, this code reads
each level of gray as a numerical value, called the bit depth. The computer system reads each bit
as either a 1 for on or a 0 for off and 8 bits make up one byte, or pixel. Each pixel is lined up
together to form a grid called a matrix, the size of the matrix is what determines the spatial
resolution that the equipment is capable of, the more pixels the matrix has the better the spatial
resolution will be. There is a range of values that digital imaging is able to process, as long as
there are adequate exposure techniques the digital system can adjust to still display a quality
image, this is called exposure latitude.

The two categories of digital receptors are indirect and direct detectors. When using a
direct detector this means that a photoconductor is used. A photoconductor, made of amorphous
selenium, converts photons directly into an electrical signal. This is seen in TFTs, thin-film
transistors, as well as FETs, field effect transistor. An image is displayed below showing the
difference between direct and indirect detectors.

Indirect detectors use a different process, but can use the same technology, in that; TFTs
can be indirect as well. Indirect detectors are different from direct because rather than turning the
photons directly into an electrical signal, they first convert the photons to light and from there are
converted to an electrical signal. This is possible because indirect detectors use a phosphor layer
that absorbs x-rays and produces light, also called a scintillator. This layer can be made out of
gadolinium oxysulphide or thallium doped cesium iodide.

If an indirect detector uses gadolinium oxysulphide the crystals used are considered to be
using an unstructured turbid array, which causes light to be scattered in all directions. This
typically results in a lower spatial resolution. However, if a thallium doped cesium iodide,
amorphous silicon, is used in the scintillator then the detector is using a structured needle array,
this allows the light to travel in a specific direction, resulting in a higher spatial resolution. The
difference between the two is seen below.

As previously stated TFT detectors can be considered direct or indirect depending on if a

photoconductor or a scintillator is used. The panel is made up of individual pixels; each pixel
makes up one side of a 3-D voxel, and all the pixels combined form a matrix. Each pixel has two
components, a sensing component and a switching component. The switching component
releases the electrons to the pixels and allows the sensing components to read how much
information is on each pixel, row by row. The readout electronics obtain all of the acquired
information and the pixels are now free of any information and ready to be used again. The
layers of the TFT detector are readout electronics (on the edges of the panel), the photodiode
array, light and a scintillator, as seen below.
 CCD and CMOS devices use an indirect detector because they contain a scintillator. The
difference between the CCD and the indirect TFT are that they use fiber optics to obtain the
information. The light image is converted to capacitors that convert the light to an electrical
charge which is stored and sent to an analog-to-digital converter. The CCD panels are made up
of a polysilicon layer, which contains the photosensitive material, a silicon substrate layer, which
collects the charged electrons, as well as a silicon dioxide layer, which acts as insulation. This is
illustrated below.

CCD devices contain detector elements, or pixels, they are made up of three electrodes
and their purpose is to hold the electrons in the potential well (as seen above). These elements
open and close when needed to allow electron flow. After each row is read the information is
sent.

CMOS devices are similar to CCD devices in that they have a scintillator and convert
photons to light to create a digital image; however, the pixels contain amplifiers that switch on
and off within each one. The CMOS device is a semiconductor that contains impurities (dopants)
in order to conduct more electricity.