Abstract:
One of the shortcomings in practical computed tomography technology is in the ability to capture real time high quality image. A frame integral data acquisition technique using television system was developed to overcome this shortcoming. The concept of frame integral was accomplished by averaging temporarily stored number of image frames as preset by an operator. The image on the fluorescent screen is captured via a video camera and digitized by a frame grabber which could then be directly stored in the microcomputer random-accessed-memory (RAM). The developed software could acquire, retrieve, sum, and average the image data in real time during radiography. For the test specimens, it was found that the CT image quality significantly improved with increasing number of frames averaged. The pixel noise defined by CT number decreases rapidly by 80-90% when an image was averaged up to 100 frames; however, very little change is observed beyond 100 frames averaging and the resolution was determined to be 125 um.