Abstract
The thickness of the surrounding tissue is a crucial factor in distinguishing the internal blood vessels in digital X-ray images, because enough contrast between vessels and tissues must be generated. We investigated the X-ray attenuations of fat, liver, and muscle tissues, using a digital X-ray imaging system specially designed for small animal studies and the contrast between these tissues and blood vessels. The fat, muscle and the liver tissues were collected from the abdomen, the back and the liver of an adult crossbred swine, respectively. The blood vessels were from mesentery of a Wistar rat. The attenuation coefficients of different tissues and blood vessels of different sizes were measured under different X-ray exposures. Also quantified was the contrast between the tissues and the blood vessels when the diameter of the blood vessel and the thickness of the tissues were the same. The limiting thickness of various tissues at different X-ray exposures was obtained for detecting internal blood vessels of a given size, using the CCD detecting limit, the contrast resolution of the imaging system and the tissue-vessel configuration. The results provided herein could be used for optimization of the parameters of digital X-ray imaging in detecting internal blood vessels.
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