Starting from this issue, we will share several opinions to share Strahlkraft’s views on the present status and future trends of CT tubes. In past , we often see this evolution map of CT tubes, which not only praises the continuous application of new technologies, but also gives us an illusion that there seems to be a faint technical path in the evolution of CT tubes.
However, the fact is that the development of CT tubes is driven by the development of CT machines, and all of them occur in a passive state. CT machines have been around for fifty years, and initially people were pleasantly surprised that CT machines could do so much in the energy range (kWs) of diagnosis that other diagnostic devices could not do before, providing precise anatomical image information with geometric multiplication.
By comparing the differences in the main parameters of CT machines between the 1990s and the current decade, you can experience how significant this progress is. Especially ,compared to the 1990s,the instantaneous power of the high-voltage generator has increased by nearly three times. Why? More efficient collection of Projection Data and image reconstruction, lower radiation dose, are the answers.
In the past thirty years, the technological evolution of CT tubes has mainly focused on how to work together with high-voltage generators to improve the instantaneous power of CT machines. The power of high-voltage generators increase easily, but what about CT tubes? We can see that several major CT tube manufacturers’ representative CT tube in different eras, and there is basically no difference in energy range (displayed on the vertical axis), but there is a significant difference in power (displayed on the horizontal axis).
Taking GE's products from 2003 as an example, the power range is 60-95kW; In 2007, just a few years later, Philips's product power range was 10-150kW. Not evaluating the pros and cons, but there are differences in the grasp of CT tube technology trends among several major manufacturers.
