A study of scattered radiation effect on digital radiography imaging system

Scattered radiation is inherent phenomenon of x-ray, which occurs to the subject (or patient). Therefore it cannot be avoidable but also interacts as serious noise factor because the only meaningful information on x-ray radiography is primary x-ray photons. The purpose of this study was to quantify scattered radiation for various shooting parameters and to verify the effect of anti-scatter grid. We employed beam stopper method to characterize scatter to primary ratio. To evaluate effect on the projection images calculated contrast to noise ratio of given shooting parameters. From the experiments, we identified the scattered radiation increases in thicker patient and smaller air gap. Moreover, scattered radiation degraded contrast to noise ratio of the projection images. We find out that the anti-scatter grid rejected scattered radiation effectively, however there were not fewer than 100% of scatter to primary ratio in some shooting parameters. The results demonstrate that the scattered radiation was serious problem of medical x-ray system, we confirmed that the scattered radiation was not considerable factor of digital radiography