The way medical X-rays are generated is over 100 years old. Time to update it

WHEN Wilhelm Rontgen, a German physicist, was carrying out some experiments in 1895, he stumbled across a type of radiation which he labelled simply as X, because he did not know what it was. His X-rays did not remain unknown for long, however. Doctors seized on them to look inside living bodies and, later, engineers used them to examine the interiors of mechanical components. What has not changed much since Rontgen’s day, though, is how they are made.

Most electronic devices have moved into the era of silicon chips and other solid-state technology. Not X-rays. The machines used to generate them still rely resolutely on vacuum tubes. But that will change shortly if Otto Zhou of the University of North Carolina has his way. Dr Zhou and his colleagues are bringing X-radiography into the world of modern electronics. In doing so they hope to create X-ray machines that are smaller, simpler and able to produce more detailed pictures. These could be used to enhance security screening at airports, to allow engineers to check the structure of materials more easily and, especially, to enhance medical images in a way that would improve cancer therapy. …