Computed Tomography with an X-Ray Transmission Pencil Beam Scanner

The pencil beam x-ray transmission computed tomographic (CT) scanner was the first type of scanner to be applied to radiologic medicine. It utilizes a rotate and traverse scanning mechanism. The scanner provides 2 dimensional images of a cross-section of the human body and relates an arbitrary CT number scale to the linear x-ray attenuation coefficient. The scanner can discriminate small differences in x-ray attenuation. The Ohio-Nuclear Delta Scanners are examples of this type. Use of hardware processors significantly decreases image reconstruction time after collection of the raw image data.