Modelling and testing of a non-standard scanning device with dose reduction potential

A non-standard scanning device with dose-reduction potential was proposed at the SPIE Medical Imaging conference 2006. The new device obtains the Radon data after the X-ray beam is collimated through a special mask. This mask is combined with a new geometry that permits an efficient data collection, thus the device has the potential of reducing the dose by a factor of two. In this work, we report a prototype of the new device and experimental data acquisition using only the mask of the new scanning geometry. In order to obtain the optimal parameters for the scanning device, several factors have been considered, including detector elements and shielding shape, fan beam angle, speed of the source rotation and materials employed. The calibration of the detector elements needs especial attention, due to the dependence of the detector response on the energy of the X-rays. A simplified version of the device was designed and mounted. Phantom data were acquired using this prototype and were used to test the performance of the new design. The results obtained are highly promising, even though the prototype developed does not make use yet of all the potential features proposed in the theory.