Preliminary investigations on high energy electron beam tomography

In computed tomography (CT) cross-sectional images of the attenuation distribution within a slice are created by scanning radiographic projections of an object with a rotating X-ray source detector compound and subsequent reconstruction of the images from these projection data on a computer. CT can be made very fast by employing a scanned electron beam instead of a mechanically moving X-ray source.

Now this principle was extended towards high-energy electron beam tomography with an electrostatic accelerator. Therefore a dedicated experimental campaign was planned and carried out at the Budker Insitute of Nuclear Physics (BINP), Novosibirsk. There we investigated the capabilities of BINP’s accelerators as an electron beam generating and scanning unit of a potential high-energy electron beam tomography device. The setup based on a 1 MeV ELV-6 (BINP) electron accelerator and a single detector.

Besides tomographic measurements with different phantoms, further experiments were carried out concerning the focal spot size and repeat accuracy of the electron beam as well as the detector’s response time and signal to noise ratio.