Scint-X is presently developing scintillator products for different applications.

Dental X-ray imaging  - Intra-Oral sensors

Although analog x-ray is still dominating among dentists, digital x-ray imaging is growing at a fast pace because it offers many advantages over analog x-ray film:

• Use of chemicals is avoided

• Images are produced “instantly”.

• Digital imaging enables powerful image processing, flexible handling and distribution of images.

• Reduced x-ray dose

However, image resolution of digital x-ray is still not as good as x-ray film, a fact that is holding back the transition from analog to digital among dentists.

Scint-X technology has attracted interest from several companies in the intra-oral sensor business and we are presently developing full-scale, structured scintillator prototypes for this application.
With the introduction of x-ray resilient CMOS sensor technology, the Fibre Optical Plate (FOP) that is often used for x-ray attenuation together with CCD-based sensors can be eliminated. Combining CMOS sensors with a Scint-X structured scintillator therefore has several advantages:

• A sensor without a FOP is thinner, less complicated and cheaper to manufacture.

• The Scint-X strucured scintillator produces minimal internal light spreading, why a larger sensor pitch with better signal-to-noise ratio can be employed.

• Light spreading and loss of resolution and contrast does not have to be compensated for by employing an unnecessary small sensor pitch, which is often the case when using an unstructured scintillator.

Scint-X structured scintillators offer dramatically increased resolution and provide a key technology to overcome this problem, enabling dentists to use digital x-ray imaging for making more reliable and accurate diagnoses.

Conventional Scintillator                    Scint-X scintillator

The figures “19, 20” indicate resolution in terms of lp/mm (line pairs per millimeter).
This means that one line or space under the number 20 has a width of 25um.

Industrial Applications – Material Analysis

• The inherently high resolution and contrast capabilities of the Scint-X structured scintillator has many different applications in Industrial Radiography.

• Small scale prototypes have been manufactured with high resolution and contrast (Typical MTF characteristics of a Scint-X structured scintillator shows resolution better than 25 line pairs per millimeter and a contrast of 0,5 at 12 linepairs per millimeter with a sensor pitch of 20μm).

• Research work has shown that it is fully possible to reach resolution levels of 2-3 μm.

When analyzing different material properties, high resolution and contrast is important in order to resolve small details. For on-line inspection of components, short exposure times are also important.
Below, an X-ray image of a AlCu-alloy (dendrite formation) is shown:

This picture was captured with a Scint-X scintillator, exposure time 0,3s. Previously, when such pictures were captured with a conventional scintillator, the exposure time was 30s, and still the resolution was inferior.