Abstract
Abstract A photon in an X‐ray beam that passes through a medium is likely to undergo one of three fates: complete absorption, scatter, or transmission. The first two processes contribute to X‐ray beam attenuation. Five main interactions can cause attenuation of photons: (1) coherent scattering, (2) photoelectric effect, (3) Compton scattering, (4) pair producion, and (5) photodisintegration. How much of the beam gets attenuated depends on which interaction process dominates. This in turn depends on the incident photon energy and the medium compositon. Broadly speaking, coherent scattering is most important at low photon energies and photondisinteration at high energies, whereas the other interactions are likely to occur at intermediate photon energies. The rich physics of interaction processes is presented in this article. We also define various attenuation coefficients, explain their dependence on photon energy and medium composition, and describle how they contribute to many exciting phenomena observed in medical physics.
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