α-Si:H/CsI(Tl) flat-panel versus computed radiography for chest imaging applications:: image quality metrics measurement

Amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) flat-panel (FP) imaging systems have recently become commercially available for both chest and mammographic imaging applications. It has been shown that this new detector technology offers better image quality and various operational advantages over the computed radiography (CR) which to date has been the most widely implemented and used digital radiography technique. However, most image quality measurements reported on flat-panel systems have been performed on prototype systems in laboratories while those for CR systems were typically independently performed and reported on in separate studies. To directly compare the two technologies, we have measured the image properties for a commercial amorphous silicon/cesium iodide [a-Si:H/Csl(T1)] flat-panel based digital chest system and a commercial CR system under clinical imaging conditions. In this paper, measurements of image quality metrics, including the modulation transfer functions (MTFs), noise power spectra (NPSs), and detective quantum efficiencies (DQEs), for the FP and CR systems are presented and compared. Methods and issues related to these measurements are discussed. The results show that the flat-panel system has slightly lower MTF but significantly higher DQEs than the CR system. The DQEs of the flat-panel system were found to increase with the exposure while those of the CR system decrease slightly with the exposure. (C) 2004 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.