Patent ID: 7306368

Claim:
An X-ray detector support apparatus, comprising: detector holding means, disposed in opposed relation to an X-ray tube and adapted to hold an X-ray detector, for detecting an X-ray transmitted through a subject after being emitted from said X-ray tube and, such that a detection plane of said X-ray detector is configured to be selectively maintained in one of a vertical position and a horizontal position; detector moving means for moving said X-ray detector held by said detector holding means, in any of a plurality of N directions along N/2 orthogonal axes; input means for manually entering therethrough a command for designating at least one of said N directions, as a direction in which said X-ray detector is to be moved; control means operable, in response to the command entered from said input means, for outputting a movement direction of said X-ray detector to said detector moving means, so as to instruct said detector moving means to move said X-ray detector in said movement direction; vertical/horizontal-position detecting means for detecting whether said detection plane is being maintained in the vertical position or in the horizontal position; movement-direction indicating means for indicating a direction in which said X-ray detector is controllably movable by said control means in response to the command entered from said input means, said movement-direction indicating means being associated with at least a part of said input means; and storage means for pre-storing information about movement directions of said X-ray detector corresponding to respective commands to be entered from said input means, when said detection plane is in both of the vertical and horizontal positions, wherein said control means is operable to determine whether said detection plane is in the vertical position or the horizontal position based on a detection result of said vertical/horizontal- position detecting means, so as to read the movement directions from the information stored on said storage means based on said determined position of the detection plane, and output said read movement directions to said movement-direction indicating means, and, in response to the command entered from said input means, to output a corresponding one of said read movement directions to said detector moving means.