Why are xrays printed on a clear piece of plastic and held up to a light box, instead of just black ink on white paper?
In: Technology
Former radiographer/x-ray tech here. In the film days, the cassette in which the film was loaded was more than a light-tight box to hold the film flat. While photographic film is sensitive to x-rays, long ago they started lining the inside of cassettes with radio-luminescent plastic, which converted the x-ray energy into photons (light), providing a much lower dose of x-rays’ ionizing radiation during the medical procedure. No idea if this trick is still used in the digital realm.
Latest Answers