Similarly, Konica Medical offers a phosphor plate system, the Regius, that requires no external plate handling. The upright system, which is dedicated to chest and abdominal imaging, uses an internally mounted phosphor plate over which a CR reader passes, capturing the image and relaying the data for display. Lumisys or PhorMax have also developed low-cost CR systems. Another camp of digital x-ray technology is made up of electronic arrays that immediately transmit data to a network, archive, or workstation for display of the reconstructed image. These signals may be created either directly or indirectly.
Electronic arrays made from amorphous selenium directly generate electrical impulses.
Plates made from amorphous silicon register flashes of light that are produced when x-rays strike a thin coating of scintillation material made of cesium iodide. Charge-coupled devices, which also record light flashes produced by a scintillator, differ from these arrays in that CCD detectors are composed of many individual chips electronically tied together. Another competing technology, CMOS, is essentially made up of microprocessors that convert light into electrical signals. At the upcoming RSNA meeting, vendors will almost certainly try to distinguish their products on the basis of their detectors. The battle over image quality, however, may be incomprehensible to anyone without a background in high-energy physics.