Patent ID: 7102149

Claim:
A method of inspecting influence of stray light which occurs in a radiation image reader equipped with horizontal scanning means for scanning excitation light on a storable fluorescent sheet, having stored and recorded a radiation image, in a horizontal scanning direction, vertical scanning means for scanning said storable fluorescent sheet in a vertical scanning direction approximately perpendicular to said horizontal scanning direction, and reading means for obtaining an image signal which represents said radiation image by photoelectrically reading said radiation image, stored and recorded in said storable fluorescent sheet, by the horizontal scanning of said excitation light; said inspection method comprising the steps of: preparing a storable fluorescent inspection sheet on which a radiation inspection image has been stored and recorded, said radiation inspection image having at least one low-density region and at least one high-density region having a contrast difference of at least 1:20 between the low-density and high-density regions, a boundary line between the low-density and high-density regions extending between opposite edges of the storable fluorescent inspection sheet; obtaining an image inspection signal representing said radiation inspection image, by photoelectrically reading said radiation inspection image from said storable fluorescent inspection sheet with said reading means; and detecting whether noise occurs in the form of a line in the vertical scanning direction in the low-density region of an image reproduced from the image inspection signal, and judging that stray light has occurred if the noise occurs and that stray light has not occurred if the noise does not occur, based on the detection of the noise.