If the rays hit the bone then reflect off, would they not travel at a diagonal and not directly back at the machine to make such an image?
In: Physics
The X-Ray image is not showing where the rays reflect. It shows where it doesn’t penetrate. It’s basically a shadow, but with the dark and light areas inverted.
The body part is placed between the x-ray emiter and the sensor, so the rays that go through the bodypart are detected and represented as dark areas, while the areas with less detection are brighter. It’s similar to a negative of a photo. Just like the old photo films were negatives and via the revelation process the image would be “inverted” per se.
So the bones, being denser than flesh and muscles, let fewer rays through and therefore are shown as brighter areas.
The image is very sharp, because the sensor is good enough to detect with such quality and because the difference in density of bone and the surrounding tissue is very high. There is basically no “transition zone” where 50% of the rays go through so it would appear as a gray fuzzy area. It’s basically all or nothing – I’m exagerating, I don’t know the percentages, but the idea is the same, the bone does not gradually become muscle, it has a very clear boundary as a solid dense structure inside soft tissue.
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