Development of ultra-fast X-ray computed tomography scanner system

The development of ultra-fast X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner system has been performed. This system can operate under the scanning time of 0.5 milliseconds/slice and give 2,000 slices/second. The original object of interest is in a transient or unsettled state of multiphase flow to measure the instantaneous phase distribution. An improvement of scanning speed was required to reduce the effects of motion artifact. The mechanical motion mechanism of conventional CT scanner is a major obstacle to improve the scanning speed. Therefore, the concept of electrical switching electron beam is adopted to reduce the scanning time. The developed present system has stationary 60 X-ray tubes and stationary 584 cadmium telluride (CdTe) semiconductor detectors. The excellent performance to the measurement and visualization of dynamic events of multiphase flow is confirmed by measuring the moving acrylic resin phantoms and the air-water two phase flow in a tube or a 3/spl times/3 rod bundle. And, the feasibility is demonstrated to the medical field by trial application for the movement of dog's heart, though the requirement remains to improve the image quality. It was confirmed by a simulation that the improvement will be performed by increasing the number of projections.