Electric point: This point, carved into a pyroelectric crystal, emits electrons when the material is heated. A flat-panel x-ray source uses an array of such points to make a more uniform field for medical imaging.
Gil Travish
A California company is developing a compact, flat-panel source of x-rays.
A startup company is developing a flat-panel source of x-rays that could help make the imaging technique portable. The company's panels are made using techniques commonplace in the semiconductor industry and would be combined with flat-panel image sensors to make a briefcase-sized x-ray machine powered by a laptop battery. Such a system might be used in the field by the military or instead of bulky bedside systems used in hospital intensive-care units. Early research also suggests it might expose patients to less radiation.
The company behind the x-ray source, Radius Health, was spun out of the University of California, Los Angeles last year. It is developing a commercial version of a flat-panel x-ray source developed by physicists at the university. The company will make its first complete x-ray imager in three to four months and says it will have a full-scale prototype in a year.
The x-ray machines used in hospitals today employ a high-energy source of the radiation. A tungsten filament at one end of a long vacuum tube emits electrons when heated and those accelerate down the tube until they hit a metal electrode, causing it to produce x-rays.
Many groups are working to develop more compact and robust x-ray sources, says Dieter Enzmann, chair of radiological sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles Health System. Enzmann was not involved with the development of the new x-ray source but serves on Radius Health's advisory board.
A key advantage of Radius Health's system is that it uses an array of emitters, rather than a single source. "There is some potential to reduce the x-ray dose if you can control hundreds or thousands of x-ray sources independently," says Enzmann. This lower dose would be especially attractive for pediatric imaging, Enzmann says, adding "if you have a portable, thin design that generates good images, it could be used both in the field and within the hospital."
Device maps the chemistry of the whole brain in moving animals.
Scientists want more scanner safety data before they can say yes.
Tiny electron emitters inside an x-ray generator could improve medical imaging and cancer therapy.
Another article says "With suitable collimation, this would enable such an array of tiles to produce a large area of parallel X-rays".
Every emitter plus target combination is a tiny x-ray tube.
Every x-ray tube, no matter how small, emits x-rays in every direction.
No bremsstrahlung x-ray source will ever emit parallel x-rays!
To make a useful beam from a flat panel array of x-ray emitters, the required collimator would be a same-sized sheet of lead, with one drilled hole aligned with each electron emitter in the array. The efficiency would be horrible, with ~99% of the radiation absorbed by the collimator. But the rectangular beam of nearly-parallel x-rays MIGHT have some unique applications.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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337 Comments
Interesting
I think I recall last year that some company (Siemens or Hitachi?) in an article on this site was developing a flexible sensor to pickup the xrays, making mammograms more comfortable, possibly conforming to any body part.
Now they need to combine the two - new technology emitter and receiver.
I was also thrilled to learn recently that companies are now combining scans using different technlogies for the same person, e.g. MRI and CT to show different tissues and structures.
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