Quantum X-Rays

X-rays are notorious for being highly affected by ambient noise. Traditionally, this has been dealt with by shielding the area from outside radiation. An even simpler solution is to just turn up the dosage of x-rays to drown out the “noise.” But that’s not ideal for a lot of reasons.

A team of Israeli researchers recently discovered a new imaging method that uses quantum x-rays to make sharper images with less radiation exposure. Quantum x-rays are formed by passing a beam of radiation through a diamond to split it in two. The first beam (called the idler) serves to track background noise and is sent directly to a detector. The second beam (called the signal) passes through the object being imaged before hitting a detector. By comparing the two, background noise can be filtered out to create an extremely sharp image. At the same time, the number of photons needed to acquire an image is substantially reduced, so there is less exposure.

Although not yet ready for hospital use, that is the long-range goal. For the time being, however, scientists will be able to learn much about quantum mechanics from researching these kinds of particle pairs.