Monte Carlo studies of a novel X-ray tube anode design

When energetic electrons are incident on high atomic number absorbers, a su bstantial fraction is back-scattered. This phenomenon is responsible for se veral undesirable effects in X-ray tubes, in particular a reduction in the X-ray output. The extent of this shortfall has been estimated by using Mont e Carlo simulation to start electrons at increasing depth inside the anode, the results indicating that an output enhancement of nearly 50% could be a chieved in principle if the electrons wasted in back-scatter events could b e trapped inside a tungsten anode. To test this idea a further set of simul ations were done for a novel anode geometry. Results showed that X-ray tube efficiencies might be substantially enhanced by this approach. (C) 2001 El sevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.