TY - GEN
T1 - The Solid State X-Ray Image Intensifier (SSXII) in single photon counting (SPC) mode
AU - Kuhls-Gilcrist, Andrew
AU - Jain, Amit
AU - Bednarek, Daniel R.
AU - Rudin, Stephen
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - The new Solid State X-Ray Image Intensifier (SSXII) has the unique ability to operate in single photon counting (SPC) mode, with improved resolution, as well as in traditional energy integrating (EI) mode. The SSXII utilizes an electron- multiplying CCD (EMCCD), with an effective pixel size of 32μm, which enables variable signal amplification (up to a factor of 2000) prior to digital readout, providing very high-sensitivity capabilities. The presampled MTF was measured in both imaging modes using the standard angulated-slit method. A measured detector entrance exposure of 24. μR per frame was used to provide approximately 0.8 interaction events per pixel in the 10. μm-wide slit area. For demonstration Purposes, a simple thresholding technique was used to localize events in SPC mode and a number of such frames were Summed to provide an image with the same total exposure used for acquiring the El image. The MTF for SPC mode, Using a threshold level of 15% of the maximum 12-bit signal and 95% of the expected events, and for El mode (in Parentheses) was 0.67 (0.20), 0.37 (0.07), 0.20 (0.03), and 0.11(0.01) at 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10 cycles/mm, respectively. Increasing the threshold level resulted in a corresponding increase in the measured SPC MTF and a lower number of detected events, indicating a tradeoff between resolution and count efficiency is required. The SSXII in SPC mode was shown to provide substantial improvements in resolution relative to traditional EI mode, which should benefit applications that have demanding spatial resolution requirements, such as mammography.
AB - The new Solid State X-Ray Image Intensifier (SSXII) has the unique ability to operate in single photon counting (SPC) mode, with improved resolution, as well as in traditional energy integrating (EI) mode. The SSXII utilizes an electron- multiplying CCD (EMCCD), with an effective pixel size of 32μm, which enables variable signal amplification (up to a factor of 2000) prior to digital readout, providing very high-sensitivity capabilities. The presampled MTF was measured in both imaging modes using the standard angulated-slit method. A measured detector entrance exposure of 24. μR per frame was used to provide approximately 0.8 interaction events per pixel in the 10. μm-wide slit area. For demonstration Purposes, a simple thresholding technique was used to localize events in SPC mode and a number of such frames were Summed to provide an image with the same total exposure used for acquiring the El image. The MTF for SPC mode, Using a threshold level of 15% of the maximum 12-bit signal and 95% of the expected events, and for El mode (in Parentheses) was 0.67 (0.20), 0.37 (0.07), 0.20 (0.03), and 0.11(0.01) at 2.5, 5, 7.5, and 10 cycles/mm, respectively. Increasing the threshold level resulted in a corresponding increase in the measured SPC MTF and a lower number of detected events, indicating a tradeoff between resolution and count efficiency is required. The SSXII in SPC mode was shown to provide substantial improvements in resolution relative to traditional EI mode, which should benefit applications that have demanding spatial resolution requirements, such as mammography.
KW - Energy integrating (El)
KW - Image quality
KW - MTF
KW - Resolution
KW - Single photon counting (SPC)
KW - SSXII
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/79955762260
U2 - 10.1117/12.843785
DO - 10.1117/12.843785
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:79955762260
SN - 9780819480231
T3 - Progress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE
BT - Medical Imaging 2010
T2 - Medical Imaging 2010: Physics of Medical Imaging
Y2 - 15 February 2010 through 18 February 2010
ER -