Skip to main content

Digital beam attenuator

Project Overview

Conventional X-Ray Computed Tomography, a medical imaging procedure, employs a system that creates a three dimensional image of a patient by taking two dimensional X-Rays upon a revolution of the patient. This construction is used in various medical diagnoses. A current drawback to this procedure is the use of a uniform incident beam despite the fact that the transmission through the patient varies significantly from point to point. This results in a non-uniform signal-to-noise ratio, a sub-optimal distribution of x-ray scatter, and significantly higher dose than necessary to some regions and insufficient dose to others.

The primary aim of this project is to design, develop, and implement a series of attenuating wedges between the X-Ray focal point and the patient that continually attenuate the incident beams in order to compensate for the variance in the patient's body. Our team seeks to engineer and test the series of wedges so that they are able to independently adjust to the correct positions based on the data received from the computer (collected from a preliminary scan for each plane in the revolution) and continually attenuate the beam for an optimal scan.

Team Picture

Team members from left to right: Ashley Mulchrone(BWIG), Katherine Lake(Communicator), Michael Scherer(Leader), and Clara Chow(BSAC).
Team members from left to right: Ashley Mulchrone(BWIG), Katherine Lake(Communicator), Michael Scherer(Leader), and Clara Chow(BSAC).

Files

Contact Information

Team Members

  • Michael Scherer - Team Leader
  • Katherine Lake - Communicator
  • Clara Chow - BSAC
  • Ashley Mulchrone - BWIG

Advisor and Client

  • Prof. Paul Thompson - Advisor
  • Prof. Chuck Mistretta - Client

Related Projects

Back to Top