Imaging quality assessment of multiplexing x-ray radiography based on multi-beam x-ray source technology

Abstract

Multiplexing technique has been widely used in telecommunication, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and various spectroscopic applications to drastically increase system throughput. In the field of radiology, however, it was just getting started to attract researchers’ attention recently due to the development of multi-beam x-ray source technology, especially the emergence of carbon nanotube (CNT) field emission based multi-beam x-ray source. The CNT multi-beam x-ray source provides an ideal signal source for multiplexing x-ray imaging applications because of its capability of modulating x-ray radiation waveforms. The feasibility of multiplexing x-ray radiography has been successfully demonstrated experimentally using a CNT fi eld emission enabled multi-beam x-ray imaging system. The idea of applying multiplexing radiography in computed tomography (CT) to speed up scanning speed has also been proposed. At the same time several simulation studies on th e evaluation of multiplexing x-ray imaging performance have been reported. In this study, we repo rted our recent investigation on the imaging quality assessment of multiplexing x-ray radiography based on the simulation work stimulated by our previous experimental experience. A computer program was written to simulate the imaging process of the as-developed multi-beam x-ray imaging system. The impacts of different noise components on multiplexing imaging quality were studied. Our preliminary results indicated that the performance of multiplexing x-ray radiography is closely related to the noise environment and x-ray tube current stability. Under appropriate imaging conditions, multiplexing radiography has the potential to achieve higher imaging speed without significantly sacrificing the imaging quality. Keywords : multi-beam x-ray source technology, multiplexing x-ray radiography, quantum noise, electronic noise