General Electric Company

Burr-brown Corporation

General Electric Corporation Gmbh

Michael A Wu

David Byrd Ribner

Jiang Hsieh

Thomas L Toth

Michael F Gard

John W Newman

Jonathan Richard Schmidt

Stephen Wayne Metz

James A Blake

Stephen W Gravelle

Arthur K Collins

Quan N Lu

Gregg W Martin

Francois Kotian

A CMOS output circuit including a differential error amplifier (3) is operated to provide a stable quiescent bias current in an output MOSFET by causing a first current equal to a threshold voltage of a P-channel reference MOSFET (M1) divided by the resistance of a reference resistor (R1) to flow through an N-channel current mirror control MOSFET (M4). A first N-channel current mirror output MOSFET (M6) having a gate coupled to the gate of the N-channel current mirror control MOSFET (M4) and a drain coupled to a drain of the P-channel reference MOSFET (M1) causes a second current proportional to the first current to flow through the P-channel reference MOSFET (M1). The first current is controlled in response to feedback from the P-channel reference MOSFET (M1). A bias current in an error amplifier (3) is controlled in response to the N-channel current mirror control MOSFET (M4). The bias current in the error amplifier and the resistances of first (R2) and second (R3) resistive load devices of the error amplifier are scaled to produce a drive voltage which applies a gate-to-source quiescent bias voltage to a P-channel pull-up MOSFET (M11) which is substantially equal to and tracks with the gate-to-source voltage of the reference MOSFET (M1).

Stable output bias current circuitry and method for low-impedance CMOS

Precise alignment of the focal spot position on an x-ray CT system is achieved using a deflection coil that produces a magnetic field which acts on the electron beam path in the x-ray tube. A variable current power supply drives the deflection coil and is controlled by input signals to align the focal spot at a static reference position, to correct for focal spot drift between scans, and to wobble the focal spot position during a scan or between scans.

Alignment of an x-ray tube focal spot using a deflection coil

An x-ray CT system acquires a series of views during a scan and reconstructs a slice image by backprojecting the filtered projection data from each acquired view. Backprojection is facilitated by employing a Cordic processor that produces the angle (.gamma.) and distance (L) of each pixel location from the x-ray source. The angle (.gamma.) selects the proper value from the filtered projection data, and this value is divided by the square of the distance (L) to arrive at a value used to update the slice image pixel value.

Backprojection for x-ray CT system

A computerized tomography system includes a detector array made up of a set of detector subelements aligned along a slice thickness direction. A controllable switching matrix selectively interconnects a predetermined number of successive detector subelements to a respective summing amplifier to produce slice-constituent signals which measure a respective slice positioned to pass through a body. Each respective slice having a selectable thickness in a region of interest to be imaged.

Computerized tomography imaging using multi-slice detector with

A supply for a high bias voltage in an X-ray imaging system has an inverter and a voltage multiplier that produce an alternating output voltage in response to control signals. A voltage sensor produces a signal indicating a magnitude of the output voltage. A circuit determines a difference between the sensor signal and a reference signal that specifies a desired magnitude for the output voltage and that difference is integrated to produce an error signal. The error signal preferably is summed with a precondition signal that is an approximation of a nominal value for the signal sum and the summation producing a resultant signal. Another summation device arithmetically combines the resultant signal and the sensor signal with a signal corresponding to a one-hundred percent duty cycle of the inverter operation in order to produce a duty cycle command. An inverter driver generates the inverter control signals that have frequencies defined by the resultant signal and have duty cycles defined by the duty cycle command. A unique state machine is described which generates those control signals.

High voltage power supply for an X-ray tube

Sigma-delta analog-to-digital conversion is used in sensing apparatus that generates a digital signal descriptive of light energy received by a photosensor, such as one of a plurality of photosensors that together receive various elements of a radiant-energy image. A preamplifier generates an analog output signal responsive to the photocurrent of the photosensor, which analog output signal is undesirably accompanied by wideband noise. The analog output signal is supplied to a sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter, the decimation filter of which not only suppresses in the digital signal a component arising from the quantization noise from the sigma-delta modulator portion of the analog-to-digital converter, but also suppresses a component arising from remnant wideband noise from the preamplifier.

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Oro Valley, AZ, United States of America

Michael A Wu