Scint-X goes to space

April 8, 2010 - PRLog -- Scint-X has participated in a European Space Agency (ESA) study on new techniques for space usage, in collaboration with the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), with the objective to realize high-resolution x-ray diagnostics in space.

This project has been very successful thanks to the dramatically improved resolution, enabling scientists and engineers to observe very small details.

Swedish Space Corporation is currently adapting one of these systems to be used for materials science research in space.

“We are very happy to be able to use this versatile and compact system which delivers absolute state of the art high-resolution x-ray imaging” says project manager Ylva Houltz at SSC. The scientific instrument is planned to be launched on the Maser 12 rocket already in May 2011, within the ESA ELLIPS programme.

“We are very excited about the positive response from the multi-national scientific team that has been involved in the study. They are impressed with what Scint-X unique technique can achieve and we have already received orders plus additional requests for purchasing similar systems from customers”, says Per Wiklund, CEO of Scint-X .

Scint-X is now offering a high-resolution Desktop X-ray Imaging (DXI) System, available for this market. The system consists of a high resolution CCD-camera, upgraded with Scint-X special technology.

This type of science has up until now only been possible to perform using synchrotron radiation. The DXI-system enables pre-testing in the home lab, making engineers and researchers less dependent on the limited availability of expensive beamline access at synchrotron facilities.

The DXI camera is also interesting for the industry, e.g. in Non Destructive Testing or material analysis applications demanding very high image resolution.

Scint-X is presently developing scintillator products for different applications. Read more on our Web site http://www.scint-x.com/

Dental X-ray imaging  - Intra-Oral sensors
Although analog x-ray is still dominating among dentists, digital x-ray imaging is growing at a fast pace because it offers many advantages over analog x-ray film:

- Use of chemicals is avoided
- Images are produced “instantly”.
- Digital imaging enables powerful image processing, flexible handling and distribution of images.
- Reduced x-ray dose

However, image resolution of digital x-ray is still not as good as x-ray film, a fact that is holding back the transition from analog to digital among dentists.

Scint-X technology has attracted interest from several companies in the intra-oral sensor business and we are presently developing full-scale, structured scintillator prototypes for this application.With the introduction of x-ray resilient CMOS sensor technology, the Fibre Optical Plate (FOP) that is often used for x-ray attenuation together with CCD-based sensors can be eliminated. Combining CMOS sensors with a Scint-X structured scintillator therefore has several advantages:

A sensor without a FOP is thinner, less complicated and cheaper to manufacture.The Scint-X strucured scintillator produces minimal internal light spreading, why a larger sensor pitch with better signal-to-noise ratio can be employed.Light spreading and loss of resolution and contrast does not have to be compensated for by employing an unnecessary small sensor pitch, which is often the case when using an unstructured scintillator.

Scint-X structured scintillators offer dramatically increased resolution and provide a key technology to overcome this problem, enabling dentists to use  digital x-ray imaging for making more reliable and accurate diagnoses.

Industrial Applications – Material AnalysisThe inherently high resolution and contrast capabilities of the Scint-X structured scintillator has many different applications in Industrial Radiography.

Small scale prototypes have been manufactured with high resolution and contrast (Typical MTF characteristics of a Scint-X structured scintillator shows resolution better than 25 line pairs per millimeter and a contrast of 0,5 at 12 linepairs per millimeter with a sensor pitch of 20μm). Research work has shown that it is fully possible to reach resolution levels of 2-3 μm

When analyzing different material properties, high resolution and contrast is important in order to resolve small details. For on-line inspection of components, short exposure times are also important.

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