Digital x-ray imaging using amorphous selenium: reduction of aliasing.

Alias reduction is analyzed with the concept of an equivalent presampling filter, and a mathematical approach is established to find the equivalent presampling filter corresponding to specific digital image processing algorithms. The effects of different sampling period T and sampling aperture tau on aliasing artifacts and on the resultant detective quantum efficiency (DQE) for a self-scanned, flat-panel, amorphous selenium detector are obtained. Different effective apertures can be obtained from the same detector by averaging signals over adjacent pixels. It is shown that adding outputs from M adjacent pixels is equivalent to introducing an equivalent presampling filter with special properties. Appropriate selection of the averaging parameters (M and weights) is shown to reduce the aliasing artifact in the resultant image. The effect of incomplete charge collection due to geometrical effects (fill factor) is examined. It is shown that a large fill factor is desirable for aliasing reduction. The relationship between a digital filter applied to the sampled signal and its equivalent presampling analog filter is also established. Analytical formulas for the sampled spectrum of white signal and for the sampled power spectrum of white noise are obtained for aperture functions with a spatially uniform response. These formulas take into accounts aliasing artifacts, signal correlation and aperture function response, and demonstrate the dependence of sampled spectra on T and tau. With these formulas the detective quantum efficiency DQE is derived. It is shown that the resultant DQE depends only on the fill factor and the size of readout electrode tau 0, but is completely independent of the degree or type of pixel averaging. That is, even though the pixel averaging method reduces aliasing it leaves DQE (omega) unchanged. When significant amplifier noise is present the DQE obtained with the pixel averaging method can be better than those obtained with an analog presampling filter. Finally, it is pointed out that the requirement of reducing aliasing artifacts conflicts with other requirements for a detector such as maximizing modulation transfer function (MTF). A careful and practical compromise has to be made by a detector designer in choosing the extent to which the aliasing artifacts are eliminated.