The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 11, 2012
Filed:
Mar. 02, 2009
Takashi Ishikawa, Tokyo, JP;
Keizo Saito, Tokyo, JP;
Takashi Ishikawa, Tokyo, JP;
Keizo Saito, Tokyo, JP;
Hitachi Medical Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
An X-ray tubeis heated under an X-ray scan condition (tube voltage V, tube current I, exposure time width t) and thus a focal point is shifted. Artifact occurs in a reconstructed image due to the focal point shift. The present invention has an object to enable correction of the focal point shift caused by heating the tube. The applicant and inventor of this application has confirmed that the focal point shift amount of the tubevaries in accordance with whether it is in a heating direction or cooling direction when viewed from a past sequence. Therefore, the sequence record and the focal point shift amount based on the heating and cooling directions are stored as data in a storage device. A just near past sequence record when viewed from now is stored in a storage unit, and the tube temperature is detected by a tube temperature detector. On the basis of this temperature and the data in the storage unit, heating or cooling and the present accumulated heat capacity are determined in a determining unit, and the storage deviceis accessed to determine a focal point shift amount. The position of the tube is corrected on the basis of this shift amount.