Image qualities, i.e., contrast and detail perception, were not considered. The properties of the image-intensifier tubes evaluated were mainly their responses to different qualities and quantities of incident x-ray. The light image may be directly viewed through an optical system of lenses and/or mirrors, it may be photographed with a still or motion-picture camera, or it may be displayed via television. Because of this concentration of electrons and the energy they have received from the electrical field, the viewing image is 500 to 3,000 times as bright as the image on a Patterson type B fluoroscopic screen. In this process the original image is reduced in size about twenty-five-fold. The output phosphor reconverts the electron image to a visible light image. An electrostatic field accelerates the electrons and refocuses them to a sharp image at the small output phosphor layer at the other end of the tube. A photoelectric layer then converts the light image into an electron image.

The image intensifier is a large vacuum tube containing at the x-ray input end a fluorescent screen which converts the roentgen image into a light image. The data and conclusions that follow are based on both the physical and the practical operating aspects of the tubes tested. In the desire to standardize photographic procedures utilizing the image-intensifier tubes, we intercompared tubes and evaluated their responses. Since that time our interest in image intensification has continued and we have had many tubes available for clinical and experimental purposes. The Westinghouse Corporation in 1949 produced the first practical model of the Coltman image-intensifier tube Chamberlain, in our institution, Temple University, used this in clinical work.

Chamberlain's Carman Lecture, “Fluoroscopes and Fluoroscopy” (1), the need for raising image brightness to cone vision level has been generally recognized. Image intensifiers are now beyond the realm of experimentation and have become an integral part of the routine equipment in diagnostic radiology.

Comparison intensifiers pdf