Objective comparison of digital flat-panel radiography detectors

Abstract

Digital flat-panel radiography detectors have become a standard part of modern digital radiography systems. Performance of a detector can be evaluated through three major indicators: noise, contrast and spatial resolution. Signal-to-noise ratio was employed to evaluate noise presence, contrast-to-noise ratio was utilized for contrast characteristic estimate while modulation transfer function and visual inspection of resolution phantom image were used for spatial resolution evaluation. In this paper, we present an extensive comparison of eight different flat-panel detectors using aforementioned evaluation methods. Comparison results are presented both numerically and graphically.