Patent Document ID: 20110211666
Application ID: 13060778
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A CT scanning system for generating a CT image of an object, the system comprising: a multi-pixel x-ray source including a plurality of pixels disposed along a z-axis and adapted to be sequentially activated, each pixel configured to controllably emit x-rays in response to incident electrons, when activated; a detector array including one or more rows of x-ray detectors, the detectors configured to detect x-rays that are emitted from the pixels and that have traversed the object, and to generate data from detected x-rays; and an image reconstruction system configured to generate the CT image of the object from the data generated by the x-ray detectors; wherein the detector array has a number of detector rows, N1, that is reduced compared to a multi-detector row CT scanning system that has a single pixel x-ray source; wherein the multi-pixel x-ray source and the N1 detector rows are positionable and the activation sequencing of the multi-pixel x-ray source is controllable to provide the same x-ray beam coverage along the z-axis compared to a multi-detector row CT scanning system that has a single pixel x-ray source and a detector array with N rows of detectors, where N is greater than N1.