Medical quantum X-ray imaging with 2D detectors

After the discovery of X-rays by W.C. Roentgen in 1895, the benefit for medical diagnostics was perceived immediately. Since then a lot of improvements to this medical method have been achieved, but modern radiographic systems still use the same basic principle: the energy of the photons hitting a detector element is integrated over the exposure time, which means that the information about the individual photon energy is lost. icine it is important to obtain as much information as possible through the dose being applied. A so-called quantum imaging system is capable of discerning and processing each single X-ray quantum and is therefore very attractive for medical application. A first step in this direction is a photon counting detector like the Medipix2 detector, in which each pixel determines the number of incident photons. velopment of photon counting detectors like the Medipix2 detector might be just the beginning of a new exciting evolution; the aim could be a spectroscopic pixel detector which is capable of measuring the energy of each single photon. Monte Carlo simulations show that such a detector would be a big benefit to X-ray imaging in future.