Physical properties of a new flat panel detector with cesium-iodide technology

Flat panel detectors have become the standard technology in projection radiography. Further progress in detector technology will result in an improvement of MTF and DQE. The new detector (DX-D45C; Agfa; Mortsel/Belgium) is based on cesium-iodine crystals and has a change in the detector material and the readout electronics. The detector has a size of 30 cm x 24 cm and a pixel matrix of 2560 x 2048 with a pixel pitch of 124 lam. The system includes an automatic exposure detector, which enables the use of the detector without a connection to the x-ray generator. The physical properties of the detector were determined following IEC 62220-1-1 in a laboratory setting. The MTF showed an improvement compared to the previous version of cesium-iodine based flat-panel detectors. Thereby the DQE is also improved especially for the higher frequencies. The new detector showed an improvement in the physical properties compared to the previous versions. This enables a potential for further dose reductions in clinical imaging.