Ultra fast electron beam X-ray tomography and its application to multiphase flow measurement

An ultra fast electron beam CT scanner is introduced which has been developed for flow measurement applications. Its basic design comprises an electron gun with beam optics and fast electromagnetic deflection system and an ultra fast X-ray detector based on room-temperature semiconductor converters. As in other tomographic imaging modalities radiographic projections are generated by a moving X-ray source, in this case the focal spot of the focused electron beam on a circular tungsten target, which circulates across the target by virtue of the electromagnetic beam deflection. The electron beam parameters are 150 kV acceleration voltage, 10 kW beam power, 1 mm focal spot size and 7 kHz maximum beam sweeping frequency. Spatial resolution is about 1 mm. Maximum object size is 120 mm and maximum imaging rate is 7000 cross-sectional images per second. The scanner has been employed for multiphase flow measurement studies and may also be used for small animal scanning.