title: Quantitative optical densitometry with scanning-laser film digitizers.
abstract: A new process for eliminating two types of artifacts inherent in commercially available transmission scanning-laser film digitizers is presented. The first kind of artifact results in nonreproducible interference-pattern fluctuations as large as 7%. The second kind results in spreading of transmitted light from low-to-high optical density (OD) in regions with rapidly varying ODs, producing errors as large as 50%. These OD artifacts cause the loss of precision for films with low-OD regions (first type) and the loss of accuracy for films with regions of high-OD near high-OD gradients (second type). Test radiochromic films, produced by uniform exposure to a 6 MV photon beam and a high dose rate 192Ir brachytherapy source, along with test radiographic films were used to characterize the artifacts of a commercially available scanning-laser film digitizer. The interference-pattern artifact was eliminated by digitizing the films on a masked diffusing ground-glass scanning bed. The light-transmission artifact was eliminated through discrete-fast-Fourier-transform (DFFT) deconvolution of transmission profiles with measured digitizer line-spread functions. Obtaining precise OD distributions after the DFFT deconvolution required prior removal of the interference-pattern artifact and application of a low-pass Wiener noise filter. Light-transmission artifacts are particularly significant for applications requiring measurement of high-gradient OD distributions, such as brachytherapy or conformal photon-beam film dosimetry and quantitation of two-dimensional electrophoresis gels. Errors as large as 15%-35% occur in OD distributions representative of these applications. The data collection and correction process developed in this study successfully removes these artifacts.
authors.affiliation: Radiation Oncology Center, Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, USA.
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Dempsey
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Low
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Kirov
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Williamson
mesh_terms: D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D003720:Densitometry / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015180:Electrophoresis, Gel, Two-Dimensional; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006801:Humans; D007834:Lasers; D055095:Optics and Photonics / Q000295:instrumentation*; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation