Okay, old guy tells stories.
Back in the twenties and thirties, doctors would employ open fluoroscopes, with an X-ray source behind the patient and a fluorescent screen in front of them. X-rays passing through the patient would cause the screen to illuminate and the doctor could see what was going on inside in realtime. Many of the old classic sequences that still show up in educational films such as the man eating and man voicing different vowels and consonants, were shot off the screen of an open fluoroscope. This approach has some problems.... namely it takes a lot of radiation to get a nice bright image, and all of that radiation (not just the backscatter) is pointed at the doctor. So although you can see open fluoroscopes in old movies where W.C. Fields has swallowed his cigar, you will not see them in use today. Because doctors needed to see movement and didn't want to irradiate themselves constantly, a number of manufacturers made cinefluoroscope systems with a Mitchell or Acme 35mm pin-registered camera movement, a very fast lens, and a fluorescent screen all in one package. The high speed Leitz Noctilux lenses were originally designed for these applications. These were in common use for heart imaging until maybe a decade ago, and if you are looking for a film image you may be able to find cardiological radiologists around with a film cineangography system. These systems all provide full aperture 35mm images. So if you want 16mm you'd have to get the lab to bump it down. All of these systems today have been replaced with high resolution video systems. The nice thing about the video systems is that they result in less radiation to the patient because the light sensor is faster than Tri-X. These systems are small and convenient enough that some cardiologists will have their own system rather than contracting it out to a radiologist. The bad thing about them is that they tend to have more smear on motion than the film systems because of the longer persistence phosphors. Now... if you don't need to deal with human beings, you can pour a whole lot more radiation into the object. There are a bunch of fairly inexpensive X-ray inspection systems for PC boards that give you realtime video with decent resolution. Not very high energy radiation since they just need to be looking at thin board traces for the most part. So... if I were looking to rent some time on a machine, I would ask a cardiologist if they could recommend a local radiology guy, or I would talk to PC board fab people, depending on whether I was looking at people or objects. I have only done static x-rays, not moving ones, and there aren't a lot of folks doing moving ones artistically today so it could be really cool. --scott lens was originally designed _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list [email protected] https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
