Affiliations: The Key Laboratory of Biomedical Photonics of Ministry
of Education Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074,
China | Department of Physics and Engineering, University of
Central Oklahoma, Edmond, OK 73034, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Prof. Qingming Luo. Tel.: +86 27 87464580;
Fax: +86 27 87464570; E-mail: qluo@mail.hust.edu.cn
Abstract: The thickness of the surrounding tissue is a crucial factor in
distinguishing the internal blood vessels in digital X-ray images, because
enough contrast between vessels and tissues must be generated. We investigated
the X-ray attenuations of fat, liver, and muscle tissues, using a digital X-ray
imaging system specially designed for small animal studies and the contrast
between these tissues and blood vessels. The fat, muscle and the liver tissues
were collected from the abdomen, the back and the liver of an adult crossbred
swine, respectively. The blood vessels were from mesentery of a Wistar rat. The
attenuation coefficients of different tissues and blood vessels of different
sizes were measured under different X-ray exposures. Also quantified was the
contrast between the tissues and the blood vessels when the diameter of the
blood vessel and the thickness of the tissues were the same. The limiting
thickness of various tissues at different X-ray exposures was obtained for
detecting internal blood vessels of a given size, using the CCD detecting
limit, the contrast resolution of the imaging system and the tissue-vessel
configuration. The results provided herein could be used for optimization of
the parameters of digital X-ray imaging in detecting internal blood
vessels.
Keywords: digital X-ray imaging, charge-coupled device (CCD), small blood vessel, image contrast, detection limitation
