"Fluoroscopic imaging devices for interventional radiology and cardiovascular applications have traditionally used image-intensifiers optically coupled to either charge-coupled devices (CCDs) or video pick-up tubes. While such devices provide image quality sufficient for most clinical applications, there are several limitations, such as loss of resolution in the fringes of the image-intensifier, veiling glare and associated contrast loss, distortion, size, and degradation with time. This work is aimed at overcoming these limitations posed by image-intensifiers, while improving on the image quality. System design parameters related to the development of a high-resolution CCD-based imager are presented. The proposed system uses four 8 x 8-cm three-side buttable CCDs tiled in a seamless fashion to achieve a field of view (FOV) of 16 x 16-cm. Larger FOVs can be achieved by tiling more CCDs in a similar manner. The system employs a thallium-doped cesium iodide (CsI:Tl) scintillator coupled to the CCDs by straight (non-tapering) fiberoptics and can be operated in 78, 156 or 234-microns pixel pitch modes. Design parameters such as quantum efficiency and scintillation yield of CsI:Tl, optical coupling efficiency and estimation of the thickness of fiberoptics to provide reasonable protection to the CCD, linearity, sensitivity, dynamic range, noise characteristics of the CCD, techniques for tiling the CCDs in a seamless fashion, and extending the field of view are addressed. The signal and noise propagation in the imager was modeled as a cascade of linear-systems and used to predict objective image quality parameters such as the spatial frequency-dependent modulation transfer function (MTF), noise power spectrum (NPS) and detective quantum efficiency (DQE). The theoretical predictions were compared with experimental measurements of the MTF, NPS and DQE of a single 8 x 8-cm module coupled to a 450-microns thick CsI:Tl at x-ray beam quality appropriate for cardiovascular fluoroscopy. The measured limiting spatial resolution (10% MTF) was 3.9 cy/mm and 3.6 cy/mm along the two orthogonal axes. The measured DQE(0) was ~0.62 and showed no dependence with incident exposure rate over the range of measurement. The experimental DQE measurements demonstrated good agreement with the theoretical estimate obtained using the parallel-cascaded linear-systems model. The temporal imaging properties were characterized in terms of image lag and showed a first frame image lag of 0.9%. The imager demonstrated the ability to provide images of high and uniform spatial resolution, while preserving and potentially improving on DQE performance at dose levels lower than that currently used in clinical practice. These results provide strong support for potential adaptation of this type of imager for cardiovascular and pediatric angiography."
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:wpi.edu/oai:digitalcommons.wpi.edu:etd-dissertations-1305 |
| Date | 07 June 2002 |
| Creators | Vedantham, Srinivasan |
| Contributors | Andrew Karellas, Advisor, Christopher H. Sotak, Department Head, Robert A. Peura, Committee Member, Michael A. King, Committee Member, Stephen C. Moore, Committee Member |
| Publisher | Digital WPI |
| Source Sets | Worcester Polytechnic Institute |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations (All Dissertations, All Years) |
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