대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지 (Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research)

  • 제28권6호
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  • Pages.756-767
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  • 2007
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  • 1229-0807(pISSN)
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  • 2288-9396(eISSN)
대한의용생체공학회 (The Korean Society of Medical and Biological Engineering)
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디지털 래디오그라피의 신호 및 잡음 특성에 대한 방사선 영향에 관한 연구

Investigation of Radiation Effects on the Signal and Noise Characteristics in Digital Radiography

  • 발행 : 2007.12.31
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초록

For the combination of phosphor screens having various thicknesses and a photodiode array manufactured by complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process, we report the observation of image-quality degradation under the irradiation of 45-kVp spectrum x rays. The image quality was assessed in terms of dark pixel signal, dynamic range, modulation-transfer function (MTF), noise-power spectrum (NPS), and detective quantum efficiency (DQE). For the accumulation of the absorbed dose, the radiation-induced increase both in dark signal and noise resulted in the gradual reduction in dynamic range. While the MTF was only slightly affected by the total ionizing dose, the noise power in the case of $Min-R^{TM}$ screen, which is the thinnest one among the considered screens in this study, became larger as the total dose was increased. This is caused by incomplete correction of the dark current fixed-pattern noise. In addition, the increase tendency in NPS was independent of the spatial frequency. For the cascaded model analysis, the additional noise source is from direct absorption of x-ray photons. The change in NPS with respect to the total dose degrades the DQE. However, with carefully updated and applied correction, we can overcome the detrimental effects of increased dark current on NPS and DQE. This study gives an initial motivation that the periodic monitoring of the image-quality degradation is an important issue for the long-term and healthy use of digital x-ray imaging detectors.

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