Detective quantum efficiency of the LODOX system

The Detective Quantum Efficiency (DQE) of a digital x-ray imaging system describes how much of the signal to noise ratio of the incident radiation is sustained in the resultant digital image. This measure of dose efficiency is suitable for the comparison of detectors produced by different manufacturers. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) stipulates standard methods and conditions for the measurement of the DQE for single exposure imaging systems such as flat panel detectors. This paper shows how the calculation is adapted for DQE measurements of scanning systems. In this paper it is described how to measure the presampled Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) using an edge test method and how to extract the horizontal and vertical components of the Noise Power Spectrum (NPS) in a way that is insensitive to structured noise patterns often found in scanned images. The calculation of the total number of incident photons from the radiation dose measurement is explained and results are provided for the Lodox low dose full body digital x-ray scanning system which is developed in South Africa.