X-ray tubes--continuous innovative technology

[Control of health risks in radiodiagnosis: a historic approach]

This paper presents the history of the discovery of ionizing radiation, as well as its biological effects and the resulting need to control subsequent health risks. It describes the historic evolution of risk control in radiodiagnosis in Brazil, demonstrating that it may be associated not only to the dose received, but also to errors in diagnosis and to costs to the health system. It is stressed that sanitary regulations have a broad remit of social co-responsibility to involve all the players with a view to safeguarding health.

A 9 keV electron-impact liquid-gallium-jet x-ray source

We demonstrate a high-brightness compact 9 keV electron-impact microfocus x-ray source based on a liquid-gallium-jet anode. A approximately 30 W, 50 kV electron gun is focused onto the approximately 20 ms, 30 mum diameter liquid-gallium-jet anode to produce an approximately 10 microm full width at half maximum x-ray spot. The peak spectral brightness is >2 x 10(10) photons(s mm(2) mrad(2)x0.1% BW). Calculation and experiments show potential for increasing this brightness by approximately three orders of magnitude, making the source suitable for laboratory-scale x-ray crystallography and hard x-ray microscopy.