Development of a modular software platform for digital x-ray systems

Health centers require full-body X-ray imaging in their busy trauma departments. Full-body X-ray scans are required for bone examinations such as diagnosis of osteoarthritis and degenerative changes in the lumbar spine. The most preferred solution is to take digital X-ray images and then to stitch them together via a dedicated software. This approach has limitations concerning imaging time, costs, applied dose, and image quality. An alternate solution that optimizes all these factors for full-body imaging is possible. This device employs Time Delay Integration (TDI) X-ray detector, a new digital X-ray sensor design, with higher resolution and sensitivity in comparison to conventional flat-panel detectors. This thesis introduces a software platform to build customizable X-ray scanners and its first implementation in a device with TDI detector. The software solution for TDI based full-body scanning involves novel ideas and approaches which improve the device performance in terms of the applied dose, quantitative image quality, and applicability in comparison to current available solutions. Although the software solution is implemented first for specific TDI scanner, the mentality behind the platform is to provide a solution for all kinds of X-ray machines. The software platform is a uni ed extensible architecture for any kind of X-ray machine.