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Bush__The_Essential_Physics_for_Medical_Imaging - Biomedical ...

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Attenuation is the removal of photons from a beam of x- or gamma rays as it passesthrough matter. Attenuation is caused by both absorption and scattering of the primaryphotons. <strong>The</strong> interaction mechanisms discussed in the last section contributein varying degrees to the attenuation. At low photon energies (1.02 MeV), well beyond the range of diagnosticand nuclear radiology, does pair production contribute to attenuation.<strong>The</strong> fraction of photons removed from a mono energetic beam of x- or gamma raysper unit thickness of material is called the linear attenuation coefficient (/1), typicallyexpressed in units of inverse centimeters (em-I). <strong>The</strong> number of photons removedfrom the beam traversing a very small thickness Llx can be expressed as:where n = the number of photons removed from the beam, and N = the number ofphotons incident on the material.For example, <strong>for</strong> 100-keV photons traversing soft tissue, the linear attenuationcoefficient is 0.016 mm- I . This signifies that <strong>for</strong> every 1,000 monoenergetic photonsincident upon a 1-mm thickness of tissue, approximately 16 will be removedfrom the beam, either by absorption or scattering.- 10?E~3ṯ::Gl'uIEGlo(Jt::o~III::st::0.30.10.03i1/11/1III:::E0.010.0030.00110100 1,000Energy (keV)FIGURE 3-13. Graph of theRayleigh, photoelectric, Compton,pair production, and totalmass attenuation coefficients <strong>for</strong>soft tissue (Z = 7) as a function ofenergy.

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