title: Image quality of a digital chest radiography system based on a selenium detector.
abstract: A digital chest radiography system has been developed, with a detector based on the photoelectric properties of amorphous selenium. The selenium layer is deposited on a cylindrical aluminium drum, large enough to cover the full field of view for chest imaging. The electrostatic charge image which is formed on the selenium surface after x-ray exposure is read out by electrometer probes using fast drum rotation. For a physical evaluation of the attainable image quality, the characteristic curve, the modulation transfer function, and the noise spectra were measured. From these measurements, the signal-to-noise properties of the detector in terms of detective quantum efficiency (DQE) and noise equivalent quanta (NEQ) were derived. The results show that the selenium-based detector has a wide dynamic range and a significantly better DQE than screen-film and storage phosphor systems for spatial frequencies below the Nyquist limit (2.7 lp/mm). As a consequence, the detectability of small, low-contrast details is considerably improved.
authors.affiliation: Philips Medizin Systeme, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: U
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Neitzel
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Maack
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Günther-Kohfahl
mesh_terms: D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D013902:Radiography, Thoracic / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D012643:Selenium
chemical_list: D012643:Selenium