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X-Ray Diagnostics and Imaging
X-Ray Diagnostics and Imaging
Direct-Exposure Film
D = log10(I0/I)
where I0 and I is the light intensities before and after passing through
the exposed film material.
The objective of this section is to correlate the optical
density D (amount of blackening) with the received X-ray, exposure.
This can be obtained with a simple model for the absorption process.
film
body
Dark
Light
X-Ray
source
To relate the number of sensitized grains to the optical density
D the absorption of the light in the film material of thickness t can be
described as:
The first and the last are the main sources for noise
(quantum mottle and random darkening).
To calculate the effect of quantum mottle we replace:
The resulting expression for the noise in the optical density of the image is:
To store the multitude of images and process the data requires computer.
The two-dimensional
image corresponds to a three
dimensional section of the
patient with the third dimension
being the slice thickness which
is typically a few millimeter
thick.
Each pixel has a value (up to 4096=12 bits) which corresponds to the
level of gray (darkness, attenuation). This number is called CT number and
contains the physical information ( attenuation density ) about the
corresponding body section.
As the attenuation coefficient ranges between m=0 (air) and m=1 (metal
inlet) the attenuation is scaled to a maximum of 4096. The CT therefore
corresponds to a two-dimensional map of attenuation across the body slice.
For the skull m 0.33 cm1, A 256 cm2, the typical entrance
dose is D0 4.8 mGy. This yields for the integral dose:
DI = 3.7J