Pixel-correlated, digital x-ray imaging system

Abstract

A portable, self-contained, electronic radioscopic imaging system uses a pulsed X-ray source, a remote X-ray sensor, and a self-contained, display and controller unit to produce, store, and/or display digital radioscopic images of an object under investigation. An X-ray image sensor configured to spatially sense X-ray radiation pulses includes a pixel clock generator, an integrating CCD camera imager operating in a progressive scan mode providing a discrete pixel readout cycle of sensed X-ray radiation pulses, a sample and hold circuit for sampling the discrete pixel readout responsive to the pixel clock, and an analog to digital converter for digitizing each pixel as the discrete pixel readout is sampled. A digital video transmission system controller board controls the X-ray source for acquiring digitized samples from the X-ray image sensor. The digital video transmission system has a buffer memory for storing digitized pixels received from the analog to digital converter, and is further provided with a serial interface driver for transmitting the digitized pixels. An image processor receives the digitized pixels transmitted by the serial interface driver of the controller for generating a radioscopic image from the digitized pixels.