STRUCTURED ELECTRON EMITTER FOR CODED SOURCE IMAGING WITH AN X-RAY TUBE

摘要

An electron emitter (1) and an X-ray tube (100) comprising such electron emitter (1) are presented. The electron emitter (1) comprises a cathode (3) and an anode (5) wherein the cathode (3) comprises an electron emission pattern (9) of a plurality of local areas (11) spaced apart from each other, each area being adapted for locally emitting electrons via field emission upon application of an electrical field between the cathode (3) and the anode (5). Electron beams (15) emitted from the local areas (11) may generate several X-ray source intensity maxima in a specific geometric pattern. An apparent loss in spatial resolution due to overlapping images on a detector can be corrected by using specific intensity patterns for the X-ray source (100) and by applying dedicated decoding algorithms on the acquired image such as coded source imaging (CSI).