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Concept
X-ray tube
Summary
An X-ray tube is a vacuum tube that converts electrical input power into X-rays. The availability of this controllable source of X-rays created the field of radiography, the imaging of partly opaque objects with penetrating radiation. In contrast to other sources of ionizing radiation, X-rays are only produced as long as the X-ray tube is energized. X-ray tubes are also used in CT scanners, airport luggage scanners, X-ray crystallography, material and structure analysis, and for industrial inspection.
Increasing demand for high-performance Computed tomography (CT) scanning and angiography systems has driven development of very high performance medical X-ray tubes.
X-ray tubes evolved from experimental Crookes tubes with which X-rays were first discovered on November 8, 1895, by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen. The first-generation cold cathode or Crookes X-ray tubes were used until the 1920s. These tubes work by ionisation of residual gas within the tube. The positive ions bombard the cathode of the tube to release electrons, which are accelerated toward the anode and produce X-rays when they strike it. The Crookes tube was improved by William Coolidge in 1913. The Coolidge tube, also called a hot cathode tube, uses thermionic emission, where a tungsten cathode is heated to a high enough temperature to emit electrons, which are then accelerated toward the anode in a near perfect vacuum.
Until the late 1980s, X-ray generators were merely high-voltage, AC to DC variable power supplies. In the late 1980s a different method of control was emerging, called high speed switching. This followed the electronics technology of switching power supplies (aka switch mode power supply), and allowed for more accurate control of the X-ray unit, higher quality results, and reduced X-ray exposures.
As with any vacuum tube, there is a cathode, which emits electrons into the vacuum and an anode to collect the electrons, thus establishing a flow of electrical current, known as the beam, through the tube.
Official source
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