Cascade analysis for medical imaging detectors with stages involving both amplification and dislocation processes

Cascade analysis is a powerful tool which can be used to calculate the signal and noise properties of medical imaging detectors. It involves the conceptual separation of the imaging chain into stages which consist of either pure amplification or pure dislocation stages. It is, however, not always po...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Medical physics (Lancaster) 2001-04, Vol.28 (4), p.501-507
Main Authors: Lachaine, M., Fallone, B. G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic noise measurement
amplification
biomedical equipment
cascade analysis
Diagnostic Imaging - instrumentation
Diagnostic Imaging - methods
diagnostic radiography
DQE
Image analysis
Image sensors
Medical image noise
Medical image processing
Medical imaging
megavoltage imaging
Models, Theoretical
Monte Carlo Method
Monte Carlo methods
noise
Non‐ionizing radiation equipment and techniques
phosphor
Phosphors
Physicists
X-Rays
X‐ and γ‐ray sources, mirrors, gratings, and detectors
X‐ray detection
x‐ray imaging
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Summary:Cascade analysis is a powerful tool which can be used to calculate the signal and noise properties of medical imaging detectors. It involves the conceptual separation of the imaging chain into stages which consist of either pure amplification or pure dislocation stages. It is, however, not always possible to break the physical processes down to these elementary stages. In this work we derive a new cascade equation which is applicable to any stage which involves multiple amplifications and dislocations. The equation simplifies to the known equations for pure amplification and pure dislocation stages in the appropriate limits, and can be numerically calculated using Monte Carlo techniques for more complicated situations. We demonstrate the use of this equation with an example: we derive an expression for the DQE of a metal/phosphor detector for megavoltage imaging with our formalism, and evaluate the expression with Monte Carlo techniques. We have found that there is excellent agreement between theory and experimental results, and believe that the formalism could be useful for other applications where the amplification and dislocation processes cannot be divided into elementary stages.
ISSN:0094-2405
2473-4209
DOI:10.1118/1.1355000