Distortion, orientation, and translation corrections of tiled EMCCD detectors for the new Solid State X-ray Image Intensifier (SSXII)

We report on the technology of imaging corrections for a new solid state x-ray image intensifier (SSXII) with enhanced resolution and fluoroscopic imaging capabilities, made of a mosaic of modules (tiled-array) each consisting of Csl(TI) phosphor coupled using a fiber-optic taper or minifier to an electron multiplier charge coupled device (EMCCD). Generating high quality images using this EMCCD tiled-array system requires the determination and correction of the individual EMCCD sub-images with respect to relative rotations and translations as well as optical distortions due to the fiber optic tapers. The image corrections procedure is based on comparison of resulting (distorted) images with the known square pattern of a wire mesh phantom. The mesh crossing point positions in each sub-image are automatically identified. With the crossing points identified, the mapping between distorted and an undistorted array is determined. For each pixel in a distorted sub-image, the corresponding location in the corrected sub-image is calculated using bilinear interpolation. For the rotation corrections between sub-images, the orientation of the vectors between respective mesh crossing points in the various sub-images are determined and each sub-image is appropriately rotated with the pixel values again determined using bilinear interpolation. Image translation corrections are performed using reference structures at known locations. According to our estimations, the distortion corrections are accurate to within 1%; the rotations are determined to within 0.1 degree, and translation corrections are accurate to well within 1 pixel. This technology will provide the basis for generating single composite images from tiled-image configurations of the SSXII regardless of how many modules are used to form the images.