Development and evaluation of a four-channel digital flash X-ray imaging system

A four-channel digital flash X-ray imaging system has been developed in our lab. The four flash X-ray heads and four detectors can be used to obtain four radiographic images at four time intervals of an explosion and ballistic trajectory. The cascaded imaging system mainly consists of three parts: (1) a phosphor screen to convert incident X-rays into visible photons; (2) a lens to efficiently collect visible photons emitted by the phosphor screen; and (3) a charge coupled device image sensor to obtain the visible light image. From the analysis of signal and noise propagation, the system is not X-ray quantum-limited, rather the system has secondary quantum sink at the light collecting stage. The construction of the system, theoretical and experimental analysis of performance are presented.