A high sensitive two-line detector with large dynamic range for intravenous coronary angiography

The medical community is highly interested in methods for non-invasive imaging of coronary arteries. One method under development is dichromography. This method allows imaging of small fast moving objects like the coronary arteries including distal parts and sidebranches after intravenous injection of contrast material. Two images with monochromatic X-rays at energies just below and above the K-edge of iodine at 33.17 keV are simultaneously taken. After logarithmic subtraction coronary arteries down to 0.7 mm diameter with extremely low iodine concentrations of 10 mg/ml become visible. Hamburger Synchrotronstrahlungslabor HASYLAB at DESY in Hamburg, Germany the system NIKOS was developed for dichromography. In this system the detector is one of the main components. wo-line detector is an ionization chamber for the two energies. The two gaps are separated by the drift cathode. A Frisch-grid for shielding the ions in a distance of 3 mm defines the conversion room. The 336 anode strips per line with a length of 56 mm in the direction of the beam are connected to the frontend electronics. The parameters of the current version of the detector in one setting are: noise equivalent of 7.6 photons, dynamic range of 300 000 : 1, readout time for the two lines (672 pixels) 0.18 ms.