title: Non-computerized off-axial tomography with 580 MeV protons.
abstract: Tomography so far has used a "passive" property of radiation absorption, i.e., variation of the transmission rate. Computerized tomography reconstructs (Fourier analyses) a 20 picture of of a sequence of 10 transmission profiles. The resulting image is therefore axially oriented. The use of the stereoscopic effect of two views of the same object (slice), taken at two slightly different angles, is, in such a base, not feasible. "Protoscopy" is based on an "active" property of radiation absorption, i.e., large angle nuclear scattering. The vertices of the large angle scattered protons are individually measured. The spatial resolution of the detectors and the Coulomb multiple scattering are responsible for the existence of an "elementary volume". Stereo display is under study. Despite the fact that "protoscopy" requires a (still) expensive proton source of 600 MeV, a scanning system, the "protoscope", is proposed to challenge all the excellent performances of the most advanced X-ray tomography techniques, such as the automatic computerized transverse axial (ACTA)-scanner.
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D011522:Protons; D011817:Rabbits; D014056:Tomography, X-Ray / Q000295:instrumentation*
chemical_list: D011522:Protons